Project Gethinator
by 500 Metric Tonnes of Palladium
Summary: Tali may have a new ship and a new crew, but the forces of the universe certainly aren't going to let that stop them from tormenting her. Continuation of Inglorious Bosh'tets.
1. I Am Ardat Yakshi, Hear Me Roar

Chapter 1 – I Am Ardat-Yakshi, Hear Me Roar

* * *

"I love clubs. I love the music, the throbbing base, the dark rhythms...it speaks to something primal in me. Something fierce, wild, and untamed."

Shepard was not of the same mind. He hated clubs, finding them to be dens of shallowness and superficiality. That, and the "throbbing bass" gave him a headache. None of that was anywhere near as annoying, however, as the insufferably pretentious woman sitting across the table from him. Her name was Morinth, Samara's daughter, which Shepard found rather unbelievable as the two of them were almost polar opposites despite their uncannily resemblance to one another. Morinth was an "Ardat-Yakshi," which was basically an asari word for "sex killer;" the sort of person who inspired jokes about how her victims "came and went at the same time." Each time an Ardat-Yakshi killed someone via melding, she grew stronger and more powerful, in addition to experiencing a euphoric rush that was highly addictive. Like a junkie looking for a score, Morinth would never not stop killing, not unless someone killed her first. And that was why he was here.

He and Samara had hatched a plan. If Morinth caught sight of her mother she would flee, so the plan was to have Shepard lure her out, entice her to invite him to her apartment, and then Samara would burst in and lay down her righteous fury on Morinth. At least that was the plan. Shepard was fighting the urge to just whip out his Phalanx pistol and drill this wretched woman right between the eyes. It would have been endlessly satisfying, especially after seeing the video diaries of her previous victim. But now he was unarmed, as carrying weapons might tip Morinth off.

"When I travel," she continued, "I go to the darkest, most violent places I can find. Places where anything can happen, and where you can see and do almost anything."

He wasn't quite sure how to respond. "Yeah, I know what you mean. There was this bar on Earth-"

"A violent bar?"

"Er...yes, I guess you could say that. Anyway, I started talking with the bartender-"

"Was he a violent bartender?"

He frowned. "Um, never mind. What was I saying is, dark, violent places are nice, but sometimes you just want something a less...dangerous. Like an ice cream parlour."

"A violent ice cream parlour?"

"Yes...one of...those..."

She leaned back, giving him a smug grin. "I've been to Earth a few times, though it must have been hundreds of years ago."

That made him stiffen up and take notice. "Wait, you were on Earth?"

"Indeed I was. I was part of the Norwegian black metal inner circle. I murdered Euronymous and burned Fantoft Stave Church to the ground, then pinned the whole thing on some pitiful wretch of a man. A few years later I had a brief dalliance with the man behind Bathory. It didn't end the way he'd hoped."

"You have a...thing...for humans, then?" he asked, hoping that Morinth wouldn't see through his rather flimsy façade.

"I seek pleasure from all races – human, asari, turian, quarian, krogan, hanar..."

He raised an eyebrow. "Wait, hanar?"

"They can do things with their tentacles you can't even imagine."

Shepard fidgeted uncomfortably.

"You want to get out of here? I've got an apartment nearby, and I want you alone."

He nodded, and the two of them quietly made their way out of the Afterlife VIP section. Samara shadowed them at a distance, remaining in the shadows. Soon the trap would be sprung.

* * *

Morinth's apartment was very spacious and quite well-appointed for being on a hell-hole like Omega. The only thing Shepard could focus on, however, was the overwhelming aura of death surrounding this woman, which was not helped in the slightest by the swords and guns hanging on the wall. Morinth herself was slouched in a sofa near the wall, trying her utmost to look seductive, but it had no effect on Shepard. Being completely honest with himself, he'd never really found asari all that attractive. Maybe it was the fact that their skin looked rough and scaly, or perhaps it was their skin tones that put him off. Either way, Morinth's attempts to entice him were failing utterly.

"I love the bass, the rhythms of the music...but here it's muted, and you're safe. Is that what you want, Shepard?"

He laughed. "People feel safe right before they die."

"It's true. We're never safe." There was a wild, ferocious glint in her eyes that reminded him of Samara's words about how Morinth was "planning to inflict horrors upon him."

"Damn, I sure know about that!" he said. "One day you're just walking along a road, minding your own business, and suddenly _bam!_ Pint-sized meteor out of _nowhere!_ Then you're on the ground with a hole in your head, and a steamroller comes along and runs you over. I know all about that; that's how my father died."

There was a knocking sound from the far wall, followed by a low, guttural growl. "What was that?" Shepard asked, turning his head in the direction of the noise.

Morinth sat up straight, suddenly alert. "Oh, that? That...that's nothing. Pay no attention to it."

"So...uh, nice place you got here," he said, fumbling for words. He wondered where Samara was, for he doubted that he could keep up this game for much longer, and he was beginning to find Morinth's pretentious twaddle intolerable.

"One of many," she said haughtily. "I travel all over the galaxy, to the deepest, darkest places I can find. Some might call me selfish, but what could they ever know? I never understood the fascination with 'restraint' and 'discipline.' We all die eventually, and in that time should we not seek as much pleasure as we desire?"

Shepard wanted to argue that, if everyone followed only their own personal whims without thought to the greater good, then all of society would collapse into anarchy, but that wasn't the role he was supposed to play. Instead, all he could answer was, "Yes, Morinth."

"Independence over submission...I think we share that, you and I."

She started moving closer to him on the couch, and he fought the urge to move away. Just then there was another knocking noise from the opposite side of the room, and what sounded like someone or something trying to claw its way out. "Damn, what the hell is that?" he exclaimed. "You got a varren in the closet or something?"

"It...it's nothing...just a few...exotic pets...I keep. It's nothing!" she said, sounding increasingly defensive. "Like I said before, I think we share a lot in common, Shepard."

Shepard was growing tired of this. What was taking Samara so long? "We've both killed before, but that's where the similarities end."

This seemed to momentarily unnerve Morinth. "Why do you say that I've killed? Let's stop playing games." She then moved even closer to him, closing her eyes and then reopening them a second later, and when she did Shepard saw that they were now completely black. It was something asari did right before they "melded." It had been creepy enough when Liara had tried it with him, and it was downright terrifying when this woman was doing it. He sensed that Morinth was trying some sort of mind-control scheme on him, but he'd be damned if he were going to let this asari sex demon have her way with him.

"Say you want me," she said. "That you'd kill for me. Anything I ask."

Shepard said nothing for a moment. "Sorry, but I'd rather hammer nails in with my face than spend one more minute with you, you worthless, gibbering mistake of evolution. In fact, I am seriously fighting the urge to just beat the blue off your ass right this instant."

Her eyes returned to normal, her expression one of complete surprise that someone could have resisted her so easily. "What...who...who are you? Are you one of Prazza's friends?"

Suddenly there was a great, bellowing roar, followed by a loud crash. An enraged grizzly bear, apparently being held captive inside the closet, had broken free and was now barrelling towards Morinth. She tried to throw the beast aside with her biotics, but the bear was already upon her.

"Help!" she cried. "It's broken free of my mind control!"

Shepard, of course, wasn't going to lift a finger to help her. That, and he was unarmed and in no shape to take on an angry, 1000 pound grizzly bear. Instead he just watched as the beast mauled Morinth to death, at which point Samara stormed into the apartment, her body aglow with biotic energy. She froze when she saw that Morinth was already dead, and while Shepard knew the Justicar as someone who was always calm and aloof, even she seemed surprised at what had just happened.

The grizzly bear, having finished mauling Morinth, turned and looked at the two of them and, in a moment that was truly surreal, opened its mouth and spoke.

"Good day to both of you."

It then leapt head-first out of the nearest window, landing on the street below, where it proceeded to send people fleeing in all directions. Shepard just stared out the broken window, wondering if Morinth had dropped a hallex or two in his drink back at Afterlife.

Samara glanced around the apartment. "An exotic pet she kept, I assume. It is likely she mistreated it."

"Yes, but...bears...bears aren't supposed to _talk._ It must have been some sort of...genetically engineered...hyper-bear..."

The Justicar looked over at the mangled body of her daughter, and Shepard could that even though Morinth was a monster by any definition, she still felt a measure of pity at her demise. "The bravest and smartest of my daughters, come to such an end. Truly, I have no words. Let us be gone from this place."

_And now there's a bear on the loose on Omega,_ Shepard thought as they quietly made their way out of Morinth's apartment. One good thing about Omega is that no one would be too upset about finding someone's dead body.

* * *

"It's been nearly an hour...I don't like this."

Tali knew it was pointless to worry about Shepard. No matter how impossible the odds were, he always prevailed somehow. Unlike her, he seemed to be extraordinarily well-favoured by the universe.

"You needn't worry so much," said Garrus, looking around as if he were just itching to shoot someone. "He told us that there wasn't going to be any shooting or explosions on this mission."

"That _is_ why I'm worrying," she replied, wringing her hands. "I know Shepard could handle that sort of thing. But this...he's going after some...what was it again?"

Garrus' mandibles twitched. "An Ardat-Yakshi," he said. "They're asari with a rare genetic condition. If one mates with you, it's like plugging your brain right into a power outlet. The effect is addictive, of course, so you can see why they have to be stopped."

"Have you ever dealt with one before? At C-Sec?"

"Yeah, I remember one a few years back. She had seduced and killed about twenty people on one of the wards. My superiors dismissed the deaths as 'natural causes;' I was the only one who noticed that the same asari was always with the victims right before they died. But I could never find any incriminating evidence, not until she got sloppy and killed some diplomat up in his penthouse on the Presidium. That was when C-Sec finally started taking what I'd told them seriously."

"Did you catch her?"

"Yeah, but before she could be charged the asari government took custody of her and paid C-Sec a large amount of money to keep the truth about her under wraps. Apparently they don't want Ardat-Yakshi from becoming widely known in the rest of the galaxy. Guess it would mar their 'superior' image."

This wasn't doing anything to assuage Tali's fears. "Well, I just hope Shepard doesn't end up...seduced...by this woman."

Garrus chuckled. "There's not a woman in this galaxy who could seduce Shepard."

For some reason, Tali found that statement very disheartening.

At this point they were doing nothing except waiting by the airlock doors of the _Normandy. _She supposed that there might have some work to do down in engineering, but that there was nothing that couldn't wait until the mission was over. As for Garrus, he spent a lot of time in the _Normandy's _forward batteries, claiming that he was "working," although Tali suspected that much of it was spent watching vids or something else that was definitely not "work."

Tali decided to pass the time by listening the news broadcasts and advertisements that played over loudspeakers throughout Omega:

_ "Now available on video: Paul Nguyen's breathtaking adaptation of Gregory Matthias'_ _fantasy series _Aria of Flame and Frost._ Step into the world of Grishnoth, where nothing is as you expected, where a terrible fate awaits at every turn:"_

_ "Have you heard? Ser Reginald's wife was taken captive by mad king Washail, and then he had his entire retinue gang rape her in front of her family! Then they cut her body into pieces and fed them to his dogs, and then he had the dogs burned alive!."_

_ "Aye, these are troubled times, Ser Aeldred. Lord Wesnoth had all the prisoners taken in the Battle of Ostar Bridge_ _fed into an enormous meat grinder he had installed in his dungeon, and then he took the thin, gruel-like paste they had been ground into and used it to fertilise his garden."_

_ "That's not all I've heard, Ser Rolf. I heard that he one of his servants caught him bedding his own sister, so Wesnoth had the man's head pulled out through his anus."_

_ "Critics are calling _Aria of Flame and Frost_ the best fantasy series of the decade. "A masterpiece," says Reia Vasali. "Every single character is completely loathsome and unlikeable; a true achievement of moral ambiguity in storytelling." Talus Varon calls it "A stunning, original work...the perfect antidote to all those fairy-tale fantasy series. It's grim, dark, and totally nihilistic...just like life."_

A few minutes later Shepard returned with Samara, and Tali breathed a sigh of relief. It must have been terrible to have to help Samara kill her own daughter, and while the Justicar wasn't the sort of person who openly displayed her emotions, it was clear that she was greatly distraught.

With nothing more to do on this miserable station, the _Normandy_ pulled away from the docking cradle and sped away. Their next destination was Illium, which was scarcely any better. To be sure, it was quite a bit cleaner and shinier than Omega, but it was every bit as corrupt and dangerous. The planet was a libertarian's dream – a place with limited government oversight and very few laws or regulations on business and labour practices. Few quarians ever set foot on Illium, as the Migrant Flotilla was forbidden from even entering the system. Not that most quarians could ever afford living there, or even find gainful employment.

If there was one upside to Illium, it was that no one asked too many questions. and thus no one would pay much attention to a Cerberus ship being outfitted with Silaris armour. Such an upgrade would normally cost a fortune, but one particular shipyard offered a substantial discount if you provided the raw materials yourself. Hopefully the new armour, combined with the multicore shielding Tali had installed, would help the _Normandy_ stand up to a Collector attack better than its predecessor. If not, then maybe they'd finally get things right with the _Normandy SR-3,_ provided they didn't all die horribly, which was always a possibility.


	2. Everyone Calls Her Barkeep

Chapter 2 – Everyone Calls Her Barkeep

* * *

"...and so they turned the wreck of the _Yamato_ into a heavily-armed battlecruiser, and set off into space to save humanity!"

Tali just glared at Kasumi, wondering if she had any actual work to do on the _Normandy._ "That's insane. Why would they waste all that effort turning some rusting hulk that's been at the bottom of the ocean for two centuries into a starship? Wouldn't it have been easier to just build a ship from scratch?"

Kasumi shrugged. "Maybe, but I'm still calling our ship's main weapon the 'Wave Motion Gun'."

Garrus had installed that new weapon just a few weeks after he had come aboard, and it had caused Tali no end of trouble. The thing had an astronomical power draw, requiring a significant amount of work on her part just so that the lights didn't dim all over the ship whenever it was fired. She vividly remembered when they had test fired it on a small asteroid. Garrus had explained to her how the Thanix cannon worked: it used a mass accelerator to fire a five-kilogram bayonet of _liquid metal_ at around ten percent of the speed of light, meaning the projectile would impart just over half a megaton of energy to its target, and the _Normandy_ had _two_ of these cannons. A single shot from the Thanix could rip through the kinetic barriers of any ship Tali could think of, and she would be lying to herself if she didn't want to see it used against the Collector cruiser that had destroyed the original _Normandy._

"So, you planning to get some R and R on Illium?" Kasumi asked. "I'm going to look around, see if I can find a few nice things."

Tali crossed her arms. "You mean steal a few nice things."

"Please! 'Steal' is such an ugly world. I prefer the term 'ruthless reallocation of resources.' And besides, I never stole anything from anyone who didn't have it coming – arms dealers, murderers, merc leaders, right-wing radio hosts, those sort of people. I figure what most people call 'honest work' is really just working to make rich people richer. I'd rather work at making rich people poorer."

"Still, it's not right taking other peoples' property. Among my people, taking something for yourself when it belongs to everyone is the worst sort of crime."

She paused to think it over. "Hmm, 'property.' Now there's an interesting concept. Someone declares some object or parcel of land to be 'property' and then threatens anyone else who wants to use it. Sounds a lot like theft to me."

"Damn it woman, don't you have work to do?" came engineer Donnelly's voice. "I don't want to look through the shops on Illium just to find that you've pawned half our inventory."

"The only things I've pawned are all those surveillance devices strewn around the ship. You can get good money for that sort of thing on Omega. I think the guy I sold one of them to was going to put it in the strippers' room at Afterlife."

Even months after the start of their mission, they were still coming across bugs and monitoring devices throughout the _Normandy._ By Tali's count there must have been fifty of them or more, collecting information on everything from outgoing and ingoing transmissions to sleeping arrangements on the crew deck. Shepard had given the order that any surveillance devices discovered were to be either destroyed or sold (something Miranda had been rather displeased about), but the problem was finding the damn things. Most of them encrypted their transmissions, which were then sent out with the _Normandy's_ usual comm traffic. Nevertheless Tali was quite confident that they had cleared most of them from major areas of the ship. So far no one from Cerberus had called and complained about all their surveillance feeds going dark, or if they had, Shepard hadn't told anyone about it.

It felt wrong that Cerberus had anything to do with this fine ship, as if it were unworthy of being tarred with their brush. And that damned AI! It was just like Cerberus to do something that stupid. When Tali first learned of it she had wanted to berate Shepard for having it on board, but she knew that it had not been his decision. He had assured her that the AI was "shackled" and did not have access to critical ship's systems, but that was hardly comforting. If the AI ever turned on them, no one would be less surprised than she.

"So you and Shepard go back a long way?" Kasumi, breaking Tali from her thoughts.

Having spent the last two years with a crew who constantly mocked her whenever she talked about Shepard, Tali instinctively braced herself for more mockery, although none was forthcoming. "It...it was only two years ago...I don't think that really counts as 'a long way'."

"Still, that's about as long as anyone else has known him," said Kasumi with a shrug. "So how did you meet?"

Tali didn't know why she felt so comfortable talking with this strange woman. Maybe it was the way her hood (which she wore _all_ the time, apparently) made her resemble a quarian if you were looking at her from a distance. "We met on the Citadel," she began. "I found evidence that Saren was behind the attack on Eden Prime, so he sent his men after me. I thought I could trade that information to the Shadow Broker for protection, but the man I contacted set me up. When I got to the meeting it was Saren's men waiting for me, and that was when Shepard showed up. If it weren't for him, I might have...well...I'd rather not think about it." She had been so naïve back then, thinking that she could meet the Shadow Broker in person, or that it would be a good idea to meet with several of his "agents" alone in a dark alley.,

"You know, if it weren't for that evidence, the Council would never have made him a Spectre."

"I...I guess," she stammered, not wanting to think about the implications of what that meant. Some might say that, since she had provided the evidence that proved Saren was a traitor, that she had, by extension, saved the entire galaxy. That wasn't the sort of praise Tali ever desired for herself.

"And then he let you join his crew?"

"Yes, but I was sure he'd say no. And when I came on board the _Normandy_ I was expecting everyone to be prejudiced against me because I'm a quarian, but everyone was really great to me."

"And what about this crew? Have they been giving you any trouble?"

She was about to respond when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a warning light appear on the engineering console. It indicated that a certain subsystem – in this case the forward batteries - was exceeding its recommended power draw. No doubt that this was the fault of Garrus and his endless tweaking of the main guns. She had already been forced to install a whole new power conduit just to provide enough energy so that the guns could be fired without sapping power from other critical systems, and at this rate Tali predicted that soon Garrus would upgrade the main guns to some absurdly powerful weapon capable of ripping a hole in the spacetime continuum.

"Everyone's been very polite to me," said Tali, ignoring the warning light for now. "Nobody on this ship really seems like the Cerberus type to me."

Kasumi laughed. "I'm sure Mr. Illusive wasn't going to put any hardcore Cerberus diehards on this ship, not with Shepard in charge."

Indeed, most of the crew were former Alliance people who had come to Cerberus out of frustration with the way the Alliance was handling things. Tali could understand that, though it irritated her that none of them seemed too concerned about the horrible things Cerberus had done in the past.

Donnelly was getting rather annoyed by Kasumi's presence. "If you're going to spend so much time down here," he said, "then at least make yourself useful. There's some plasma manifolds on the subdeck that are needing a good scrub, and you look like someone good at fitting into wee spaces."

"I like it better down here," she replied, putting her hands to her hips. "Besides, that asari down the hall from me, Samara? She's always giving me creepy looks."

"Well you _are_ a thief," Tali gibed. "And Justicars are sworn to kill lawbreakers whenever they find them."

"Haw haw. That's so _very_ reassuring."

Tali heard the faint sound of air rushing against the outside of the hull, which meant they had arrived at their destination. In spite of Shepard allowing the crew brief shore leave while the new armour was installed, she would rather stay here and work on the engines some more. But it would feel rather odd to be working all by herself, so she reluctantly made her way to the airlock. There she was met by Shepard and Joker, who were waiting for the airlock decontamination cycle to finish for the crewmembers ahead of them. Shepard, as usual, was fully armed. Two years ago Tali would have regarded that as a rather silly, but seeing what sort of horrendous catastrophes had happened to her out of the blue, it now seemed the most sensible thing to do.

"You know, commander," Joker said, "I heard there's this hotel down on the lower levels of Illium called the Azure..."

"Joker, if this is another one of your plans to-"

"I'm just saying, commander, 'once you go blue, nothing else will do'."

He sighed. "Now I know what Liara was talking about when she said people have all sorts of misconceptions about her race."

"God, you're such a buzzkill." He then noticed Tali standing behind the two of them. "Oh, hey Tali. We're going to the _Eternity_ bar to get a few drinks; you want to come?"

"Sure."

"You quarians, uh, you _do_ drink, right?"

"Of course. We were one of the first races in the galaxy to create alcoholic drinks." At least that was what her people claimed; she had no idea if it were really true or not.

_"Decontamination in progress," _announced an automated voice. With Shepard ashore, that meant Miranda was now in charge. She would be overseeing the installation of the Silaris armour, foregoing any shore leave time...not that she seemed to mind much. Many wondered if she took pleasure in anything, aside from exercising her authority.

The airlock doors opened with a _hiss_, revealing the cavernous interior of one of Nos Astra's many shipyards. Like most others on this planet, the shipyard was willing to install pretty much anything you wanted, provided you had the credits. This could range from anything as simple as an engine upgrade to the installation of weapons of unimaginable destructive power. The _Normandy_ was one of many ships currently docked in the shipyard; sitting right next to it was a large, rather ugly-looking freighter named the _MSV Lysholm Linie. _None of the ships looked as good as the _Normandy_, at least in Tali's opinion, and some looked as if they just had just flown through a meteor shower. There was one particularly unattractive vessel sitting opposite the _Normandy, _which strongly resembled an obese bird, with four large "wings" sticking out of the hull, one of which was badly damaged. Curious as to who owned such an ugly ship, Tali brought up her omni-tool and set it download the ship's registry information, which appeared a few seconds later:

_NAME: *vessel name data missing or corrupt*_

_ CLASS: Frigate_

_ BUILDER: Space Dynamics Co._

_ OWNER: McCloud, F._

Her omni-tool revealed that this particular ship was flagged with a Citadel security alert, meaning, among other things, that it was banned from Citadel space.

_ SECURITY ALERT: This vessel is believed to originate from a mass relay currently under Council embargo._

_ ALERT LEVEL: 5 – May be attacked on sight._

Past the shipyard was the main docking area for Nos Astra, giving newcomers a wide vista of the downtown core of the city. Like the wards of the Citadel, it was a maze of skyscrapers stretching off into the horizon, with streams of aircars flying in between the buildings. It was all designed to impress, though Tali knew there was a seedy underside to all this gloss and polish. She could not help but notice all the hostile glances people gave her as they passed by, something she was very used to by now. This was a planet for people who had money to spend, a criteria which didn't include most quarians.

"This planet has a strange fascination with the colour fuchsia," she said, staring out of the sprawling cityscape.

"You know, I always wondered how often those aircars get into smash-ups," said Joker. "I mean, most people can't even drive a car in two dimensions, let alone three."

Shepard laughed. "That reminds me. You ever miss those sojourns we had in the Mako, Tali? Didn't we have fun, driving across all those uncharted worlds?"

"What, you mean some barren, desolate planet, where you'd _always_ drive over the roughest, most mountainous terrain you could find? How could I not miss that?"

"They weren't _all_ barren," he retorted. "I think one of them had a tree."

"And that is why I stay up on the ship," Joker added.

Past the spaceport was the Nos Astra Exchange, a relatively small stock exchange which was mostly empty at this point, as trading closed after a certain time of day. Overlooking the trading floor was Liara T'Soni's office, although the lights were off, suggesting she had gone home for the night. During her time on the original _Normandy_ Tali had never really spoken to her much, never really getting over the feeling that, of all the races in the galaxy, asari looked down upon quarians more so than others. Liara wasn't anything like that, but sometimes her gut reaction was stronger than her common sense. From what Shepard had told her, Liara was now working as an information broker, which struck Tali as a rather bizarre and improbably career move for someone who was always rather awkward in social situations. It was a bit like a post-doctoral physics student becoming, in two years time, a feared and respected interstellar arms dealer.

They reached the doorway to the _Eternity_ lounge, and no sooner had they opened the door then a volus came flying out head first, making a high-pitched scream all the while. He slammed into a nearby wall and fell to the ground with a dull _thud,_ right before he got up and began stumbling away.

A quick glance revealed that it was the bartender, Matriarch Aethyta, who had thrown out the volus with her biotic powers. "Get the hell out of my bar, drunk!" she hissed, pointing at the volus. "And no more empty threats like last time!"

The volus was predictably defiant. "That...that's what _you_ think!" he muttered before walking off, falling over several times.

Unperturbed by all this, Aethyta went back behind the counter, secretly delighting in forcibly evicting another customer. Shepard, Tali, and Joker sat down at the bar, with no one there paying any attention to the fact that Shepard was packing enough weaponry to level an office building. Maybe they were too drunk to care, or maybe violence here was the rule, rather than the exception. Whatever the reason, everyone who came to _Eternity_ knew better than to provoke the bartender, who kept a running tally of all the unruly patrons she had (quite often literally) thrown out. The offending volus had brought the number up to 893.

"Huh, you again," she said, glancing at Shepard while she was pouring a drink for another customer. "Taking a break from saving the galaxy?"

"Something like that."

"Get you something to drink, or are you here for my wise, matriarchal counsel? I should warn you, sometimes I give out bad advice on purpose if I think the results will be amusing."

"I'll take a shot of Serrice Ice Brandy," he said.

Tali ordered next. "I'll have a _Wreid_ _vas Vrekka."_ It was a traditional quarian drink, whose name translated roughly as "fist of an angry god." Of course the stuff they sold today wasn't half as good as the stuff they brewed back when they still had the homeworld. There were still a few bottles kicking around the galaxy that dated from that time, although no one could say how well it would taste after more than three centuries.

Joker just smirked as he ordered his drink. "I'll take...the quarian Neutronium."

There were several hushed gasps among the patrons, and then the whole bar fell silent.

Aethyta laughed. "Don't try to be tough, kid. That stuff is meaner than a krogan that just got shot in the ass."

That was an understatement if Tali ever heard one. "Joker, you're insane! Only quarians can handle Neutronium, and only after years of building up a tolerance!" Her father was one such individual, who kept several bottles of Neutronium locked up his quarters, only bringing it out for special occasions. "Special occasions," as Tali remembered, usually involved Rael getting falling-down drunk and embarrassing everyone.

This didn't bother Joker in the slightest. "Maybe I want to live dangerously," he said glibly, far too glibly for someone ordering a drink that basically amounted to concentrated liquid death for non-quarians. Neutronium typically had an alcohol content of between 300 and 500%, although how this was achieved was a closely-guarded secret among quarians. Some said it involved using mass effect fields to cram alcohol molecules into super-dense liquid, while others speculated that the drink did not contain alcohol at all, but rather a substance that had the same effects as alcohol, yet was five times as potent.

The matriarch continued trying to talk him out of it. "Look, if I serve you this drink I'll be cleaning your guts up off the floor. That tends to scare the other customers."

"All right, all right," said Joker, finally relenting. "I'll just have the most expensive drink you got. Put it on Cerberus' tab."

If Tali concentrated hard enough, she could imagine that there were no Reapers, no Collectors, and that she was just enjoying a drink with some of her friends. It did not take long for that illusion to crumble. There was a good chance that their mission was utter suicide, something Shepard had made abundantly clear to her when she first joined his team. But if no one stopped the Reapers, then she and every other sapient being in the galaxy was as good as dead anyway.

There was another reason that she was so eager to come aboard the _Normandy,_ and that was to get away from the suffocating presence of the flotilla's admiralty board. But less than three weeks after leaving the Migrant Fleet they were dragging back, charging her with treason, of all things. That was bad enough, but the full truth was even worse: that her father was dead, along with everyone else on the ship he was working on, and it was entirely his fault. He had been reassembling geth, partly from pieces she had sent back, then activating them to use as test subjects. The whole thing had blown up in his face, and when the admirals learned that Tali might have been complicit in, they were very quick to "throw her to the wolves," as humans might say. If it had not been for Shepard's fast talking, they would have convicted her and exiled her from the fleet. But in doing so they had destroyed any evidence as to what her father had been up to on his lab ship, a decision had agonised over in the month following her trial. Was it selfish to want to preserve her father's good name when so many others had died on that ship? Didn't the families of those people deserve to know the truth? There were several times when she almost sent a message back to the admiralty, explaining what had really happened, but she could never bring herself to do so. Shepard had explained to her that giving the evidence to the admirals would push them towards war with the geth, a war they would surely lose, and maybe Tali believed him, but it didn't make her feel any better.

As she sipped her drink (which was quite potent, even for a quarian), she found herself dwelling on one simple fact: that she no longer had any family left, at least no biological family. Not that her comrades were much better off in that regard. Shepard had only his mother, with whom his only contact was over the link. Garrus was more or less estranged from his family, Miranda despised her father (who wasn't even really her "father" in a strictly biological sense), and Samara had just been forced to kill one of her daughters. Wasn't there anyone on the ship who had a stable, normal family? Maybe having few friends or relatives was a perquisite to being a part of a galaxy-saving team. Or maybe it was just being stark, raving mad.

"You know, for such an expensive drink, this really isn't all that strong," said Joker, gazing down at the bottom of the glass. "I could have handled that Neutronium, no sweat."

Aethyta was not amused. "Are you trying to impress me?"

Joker gave her a leering look. "And what if I am?"

She crossed her arms. "Ha! I'm old enough to be your great-great-great-great-you-get-the-idea-grandmother."

"You say that it like it's a _bad_ thing."

"So what brings you back to Illium?" she said, turning her gaze to Shepard. Tali couldn't help but notice the somewhat sultry tone the bartender was taking with him, and she figured that, when an asari matriarch took an interest in you, it meant you were someone really important in the galaxy.

"Just getting some upgrades for the ship, that's all." Shepard had finished his Serrice Ice Brandy off with such speed that it was clear he had had this drink many times before.

"My ship got stolen the day after I set foot on this damn planet," the barkeep muttered. "I got a look at who did it, too. It was an asari; you'd think that a species as 'wise' and 'advanced' as ours would be above stealing from an old woman. It's all crap. You ever had an asari give you that old 'we were building starships while your species was still mucking about in the dirt' line?"

Shepard chuckled at that. "Yeah, a few times."

"Then let me give you a bit of advice. Next time one says that to you, ask her 'but what have the asari done since then?' She'll either not have an answer for you, or she'll just get angry and punch you in the face."

"You don't think much of your own people, do you?" Tali said, expecting an angry tirade in response.

"We've got our heads so far up our asses with our own superiority that we can't see the other races speeding by. All that 'art' and 'philosophy' we blather on about is nothing that other species haven't done already. People think we matriarchs are all full of 'wise counsel' and 'sage advice,' but you'd be surprised how many of us can live for a thousand years and still not know a damn thing about how the real world works." She gave a heavy sigh, and then began pouring _herself_ a drink. "But I'm sure you don't want to sit here and listen to my complaining all night. Usually it's the customers that do that. Wives, husbands, children, that's what they're usually whining about. You got any children, Shepard?"

"No."

"Then thank whatever god you humans believe in! That rot about children being the biggest joy in life is all crap, especially when you wake up one morning and find that your partner's gone and she's taken your daughter with her, and she didn't even have the common courtesy to leave a note."

"I'll, uh, keep that in mind," he said, obviously feeling a bit awkward.

That made Joker laugh. "Every woman in the galaxy wants to have Shepard's babies. And maybe some of the men, too. Wait...uh...forget I said that."

Maybe she was just hearing things, but Tali thought that there was a hint of sadness in Shepard's expression. In all their time together, she had always got the sense that Shepard was a very lonely individual, and it wasn't just because humans tended to be more individualistic and did not form the sort of close bonds amongst their shipmates that quarians did. She had long since learned to deal with that. No, it was the fact that Shepard had no family except for his mother, whom he rarely spoke to, and no real friends except her, Garrus, Joker, and Chakwas, who, not coincidentally, were the only people from the first _Normandy_ that had signed on for this mission. Liara T'Soni had changed so much she was almost a different person, and from what Tali had heard, Shepard's reunion with Chief Williams had not gone well. It seemed utterly pitiable that he was going into what was most likely a suicide mission with so people he might call friends.

But maybe she was wrong. Maybe Shepard didn't need anyone. Humans were so hard to read sometimes. Tali often fantasised about becoming more than just friends with Shepard, even if it was a foolish fantasy. If Shepard did want that sort of companionship (and she had no solid proof that he did) then it certainly wouldn't be from someone like her, a quarian. Someone whose face he couldn't see, someone he could never really be close to without risking her health.

She was shaken from her reverie by heaving, thumping footfalls, followed by several gasps from other patrons in the bar. Tali turned her head to see a huge, hulking krogan stomping into the room, dressed from head to toe in heavy carapace armour and wielding an enormous Gatling gun that was nearly as big as he was.

"There you are!"the krogran growled, pointing at Shepard. "Get ready to die!"

The Gatling gun began to spin up, barely leaving Shepard enough time to vault over the bar and take cover. Tali sprung out of her chair and somersaulted behind a railing. Joker tried following Shepard's lead, and succeeded in getting behind the bar, although he probably broke numerous bones in the process.

The krogan's gun began to fire, at such a high rate that the individual shots blurred together into one long deafening roar. Even a krogan wasn't quite strong enough to handle the recoil of the gun, and as a result it spewed bullets all across the room. The rest of the patrons were either fleeing in terror and huddling behind tables and railings, although those wouldn't provide much protection should the krogan turn his gun on them. The Gatling gun was spitting bullets at such a phenomenal rate that it could probably cut right through most cover. Luckily for the bystanders, the krogan appeared to be focused on Shepard, and rather than try to advance on his position, he was simply trying to wear down the bar with a non-stop barrage of bullets.

Knowing what she had to do, Tali grabbed her Eviscerator shotgun, stood up from cover, and fired off a shot at the krogan. His shields easily soaked up her blast, so she fired again, which got the krogan's attention. He swung his monstrous gun around to face her, but the weapon's spin-up gave Tali enough time to duck back into cover. The second it started firing again she was showered with chunks of the wall and ceiling that was being chewed up by the relentless hail of bullets.

"_I...am...UNSTOPPABLE!"_ the krogan bellowed, his voice barely audible over his gun.

The recoil from the Gatling gun made the krogan unable to walk forward while firing, so he took his finger off the trigger and began storming towards the bar. Shepard immediately popped up and fired off several bursts from his assault rifle, and Tali joined in with a few shots from her Eviscerator, but even this was only enough to make the krogan stagger backwards, just as he began firing again. The massive recoil of the Gatling gun sent bullets spraying everywhere, tearing up the ceiling and dumping dust and debris all over the floor. Were the situation not so deadly, it would have been almost comic – a krogan struggling to control his ludicrously-sized weapon. Once he had it back in hand he resumed firing at the bar counter, which was rapidly becoming a heap of rubble. Tali continued popping out of cover and firing back, and while the krogan's shields had fallen her shots were just bouncing off his armour.

Then she heard a sound like a grenade going off, and in an instant half the krogan's head disappeared in a spray of orange mist. His body stumbled back a few feet, then fell to the ground, twitching for a few seconds before it lay still. Tali stood up to see Aethtya standing over the ruined bar counter, holding in her hands the biggest shotgun she had ever seen. She racked the slide, popping out a thermal clip; apparently it took just one shot to heat the clip to capacity.

"Haven't had to use this thing in a long time," she said, looking completely unfazed by the ordeal. "I keep it around for the _really_ tough customers."

Shepard got back to his feet, stowing his assault rifle. "Joker! You all right?"

"Yeah," he groaned, standing up slowly. "I think I broke my...everything."

"What about you, Tali?"

"I'm fine."

The _Eternity_ bar was a disaster area. There was not one section of wall, floor, or ceiling that had not been completely riddled with bullets, and nearly every piece of furniture was ripped to shreds. It all looked very much as if a bomb had gone off, though fortunately none of the patrons had been hit. There was a good reason why portable Gatling guns had never really caught on, namely that you couldn't hit a damn thing, even at close range.

Matriach Aethyta looked over the scene of carnage and destruction, looking only slightly dismayed. "Guess _Eternity_ wasn't such a great name for the place, huh?"

Shepard walked over to the dead krogan, and for a second Tali feared that it would suddenly spring back to life. Krogan were well-known for their ability to survive injuries that would kill members of other species five times over.

"I'm guessing someone hired this krogan to kill me," he said. "The only question is who?"

A quick scan with Tali's omni-tool revealed that the krogan had no identification on him, and his armour didn't have any insignias on it. She wondered how he had managed to bring such an enormous gun across the trading floor and into the bar without anyone calling the police.

"Maybe the Collectors hired him?" Tali wondered aloud.

"Possibly. It'd make sense, given how many times they've tried to kill me. But a single krogan doesn't seem to be their style. I'd expect them to send at least fifty after me."

Joker was already limping towards the exit. "We should get back to the ship. In case there are any more krogan coming after you."

"Good idea."

"Wait," Aethyta said. "My boss is going to have my head when she sees this. I'm coming with you."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "You do know, this mission we're on, there's a good chance we'll all end up getting killed?"

She laughed. "After a thousand years I can think of worse ways to end my days. And it'd be great to use my biotics for something other than throwing out unruly customers. That, and you never know when you might need my wise counsel. I get the feeling you'd be more inclined to listen to me than those idiots on Thessia."

"Well, I guess having an asari matriach on board could useful."

The four of them started out towards the exit when they encountered the bar's owner, whose eyes went wide when she saw what her establishment had been reduced to.

"What...what the hell happened here?" she cried.

Aethyta pointed back at the dead krogan with her thumb. "_He_ happened," she said flatly before continuing on towards the door.

This didn't satisfy her in the slightest. "What...? And where do you think _you're _going?"

The matriarch shrugged. "I'm on a mission. Saving the galaxy and all that crap."

Up until now, Shepard had been actively recruiting teammates for the mission. It was a welcome change of pace to find someone who was asking to join them instead; no questions asked, and it reminded Tali of how things had been on the first _Normandy._ She had been so eager to go along with Shepard, not really understanding what she was getting into. Maybe if she had known she'd end up fighting machine gods from beyond the galaxy she might not have been so enthusiastic. Tali preferred not to think about that sort of thing.

When they returned to the ship the shipyard workers were already busy installing the new armour plating. Tali, however, was preoccupied with the attack in the bar. Shepard was right in that it did not seem very much like the Collectors to send one hired gun to kill him. Something told her, something deep in her gut, that someone else was behind this. But how would they go about determining who _was_ behind it? She decided to think no more of it and instead concentrate on how this new armour was going to affect the _Normandy's_ engines. Hopefully it would only take a few minor adjustments and not the days of work Garrus' new guns had caused. She was never going to let him off the hook for that.


	3. Heart With No Companion

Chapter 3 – Heart With No Companion

* * *

_On Quarians and their Liquor_

_By Rainald Sveinsson_

One thing Shepard loved about the extranet was that you could find information on just about anything. For instance, while the asari government tried to keep the existence of Ardat-Yakshi under wraps, that didn't stop information about them from spreading all across the extranet, resulting in them becoming something of an "open secret." Any search engine brought up reams of information about Ardat-Yakshi, as well as a disturbing number of fetish sites. A great many people had gotten the idea into their heads that, if an Ardat-Yakshi mated with you, you would become one of them. Several thoroughly terrible novels and films had been based on this concept

At the present he was just doing some reading up on various alcoholic drinks created by the quarians, who, as it turned out, were well-known for that sort of thing.

_Around the year 12,104 BCE, the first quarian discovered how to create alcoholic beverages._

_ He did not know how many drunk-driving accidents, regrettable sexual encounters, and ill-advised pranks that his discovery would cause._

_ Quarians, in general, prefer their drinks both strong and in large quantities. This is due to the physiology of the quarian liver, which is superior even to that of krogan in its ability to metabolise large amounts of alcohol. Non-quarians who consume quarian alcoholic beverages will rapidly experience acute alcohol poisoning, most often leading to death. On a more practical note, alcohol is a natural disinfectant, which makes alcoholic beverages appealing to a race with weak immune systems._

_ One particularly infamous drink is "Neutronium," so named because of the legend surrounding it, namely that it is created from distilled neutron-degenerate matter. Its exact composition remains a mystery, as it has confounded all mass spectrometers and other means of determining chemical composition. Non-quarians who have consumed Neutronium and survived claim that the beverage tastes like "kissing a lit rocket nozzle" while its intoxicating effects were likened to "having your brain shot from a mass accelerator straight into a black hole."_

Miranda's voice, coming from the ship's intercom, jarred him from this thoughts. "Commander, I need to speak to you in my office. We've got a problem."

"I'm on my way." He switched off his private terminal and stood up, wondering how big of a problem this was going to be.

Shepard's quarters would be the envy of any captain in the Alliance. Having grown up on various ships, he was accustomed to tight, cramped accommodations, so having such spacious quarters on the _Normandy_ was like living in the lap of luxury. There were even a pair of fish tanks, although he hadn't bought any fish yet, instead choosing a hamster as his pet. Shepard had named the rodent "Harvey;" Yeoman Chambers had suggested naming it "Schmooples," to which he had responded with a withering glare.

The elevator took him down to the third deck, which was where the crew ate and slept. It was also home to the medical bay, AI core, life support, the main battery, and two observation decks. As this was technically a civilian ship, the accommodations for the crew were a bit more posh than what you'd expect on an Alliance vessel. There was a large television instead near the mess hall table, currently displaying some important soccer game that Shepard couldn't be arsed to learn the details of. There was also a fully-equipped galley, which was the territory of Mess Sergeant Gardner, who was now preparing some meal that smelled rather unappetising.

A quick glance back at the mess hall table revealed that the crew was not watching just plain old soccer, but the asari variant of it. According to the rules in human soccer leagues, individuals with biotics were forbidden from competing, as their abilities could grant them an unfair advantage. The asari, on the other hand, had taken the sport and not only allowed the use of biotic powers, but encouraged it. Thus "biotic soccer" was born – a sport which treated viewers to such sights as seeing goalkeepers using singularities to block shots, players using biotic powers to throw defenders aside, or seeing the ball kicked with such force that it blew away both the goalkeeper and the goal.

Before Shepard could reach Miranda's office, he was approached by crewman Hadley, who looked rather upset about something.

"Commander, could I have a word with you?"

"What's on your mind, Hadley?"

He looked left and right, as if checking to make sure no one was around to overhear them. "It...it's about your quarian engineer Tali."

Something told him he wouldn't like where this was going. "Speak freely, crewman. I want to know if you have a problem with my chief engineer."

"Well commander, it's just that I...I...well...I don't like her."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I just...don't like her, that's all."

"Has she been giving you any trouble?"

"Actually sir, I've never spoken to her."

Shepard sighed, knowing full well what was coming. "Hadley, if you have something against quarians-"

"Oh no, commander, I have nothing against their kind, I just don't like her."

"Wait, so you don't have anything against quarians, and you've never spoken to her...so what is your problem with her, then?"

Hadley's expression turned to one of embarrassment, like a child caught stealing from the cookie jar. "It's just that everyone else seems to like her, and...well...I wanted to be different, 'cause then it'd make me all cool and elite. I guess it doesn't make much sense when you think about it. Um...sorry for bothering you, commander." He then sheepishly returned to watching the game.

Miranda's office doubled as her quarters, and next to Shepard's they were the largest living space on the ship. The two of them had a rather adversarial relationship, to say the least. Miranda was a Cerberus loyalist through and the through, while the first thing that popped into Shepard's mind whenever he heard the word "Cerberus" was the massacre of his unit Akuze. He would never forgive them for that; he didn't care what cell was responsible for it or how far along the command chain it was. Miranda was never so tactless as to try to "convert" him to the Cerberus cause, but her lack of concern over the rather sordid history of her organisation angered him. He could not help feeling that she had been assigned to the _Normandy_ as a political commissar, there for political indoctrination and little else. That wasn't to say she didn't have her talents, of course, but it was clear to anyone that, were it not for their mission, he and Miranda would have nothing to do with each other.

"You have something for me?" he said, eager to get this over with.

She didn't even look up from her computer. "Commander, I've received a rather troubling bit of information from the Illusive Man. This morning someone successfully hacked into his personal database and downloaded data on certain Cerberus operations."

"Hard to believe that someone could get into his files," he said, now taking this a little more seriously. "He's spent years keeping people from learning anything about him."

Miranda stood up. "Whoever did this knew what they were doing. They intercepted a signal from one of our operatives and inserted a virus into the data. Once it was past the firewall it peeled itself from the data stream and began sending information back over the extranet."

"Any idea where it was going?"

"None. The virus deleted all records of its activities right before it deleted itself. We don't have any idea on what information was transmitted, so we have to assume that all of it was. Whoever's responsible must be a programmer of extraordinary skill."

He shrugged. "This sounds like a major problem from Cerberus, but how does this affect our mission?"

Maybe that was wrong to say, as Miranda twitched in irritation. "That's not all, commander. Shortly after that hacking attempt a similar attack was made on the _Normandy_. They tried to upload a virus by hiding it in an incoming transmission from the Illusive Man, but EDI was able to detect and quarantine it. Shepard, that virus was programmed to download all information on Project Lazarus. They managed to get a significant portion of the data before EDI detected the virus; nearly all of it, in fact."

Something stirred in him – a sense that these tidings portended something...unpleasant. "And we have no idea who's behind this, either."

She shook her head. "It could be the Collectors, or possibly someone working for the Shadow Broker. A lot of people would pay good money for that kind of information. But that's just my speculation. The virus's code contained information on where the data was to be sent, and I asked EDI to run a trace, but whoever's behind the attack routed their signal through 1478 proxy servers spanning the entire galaxy. The hack could have started anywhere – a personal computer, someone's omni-tool, a public extranet terminal...we'll have no idea until EDI finishes tracing the signal, and that could take days. It's a good thing our hacker didn't count on her."

"So there's nothing we can do until then?"

"I'm afraid not."

Shepard pondered taking this moment to tell Miranda that maybe she ought to stop wearing stilettos into battle, as that was a good way to break an ankle or two, but decided that it would be best not to further antagonise her.

Outside, matriarch Aethyta was busy setting up a bar on the opposite Gardner's galley. She had come aboard with nothing more than she could carry, and yet somehow she had already stocked the bar with enough liquor to kill everyone on the _Normandy_ by alcohol poisoning. Perhaps it was some talent of asari matriarchs to procure large quantities of liquor on short notice. Or more likely, a talent solely of this particular matriarch. At present, Garrus was seated at the bar, drinking some beverage that was bright orange in colour.

"...and this batarian slaver was meeting his contact on Omega. He obviously didn't know a thing about what the station was like, and he thought that he'd be safe if he met his contact in an open, public space. That let me set up a sniper position about half a kilometre away, and the second the bastard showed his face I put a round right between his eyes. All four of them."

The matriarch saw Shepard approaching and, as if reading his mind, was already pouring him a shot of some asari liquor, likely something potent. "Nice ship you got here," she said. "Didn't expect there to be so many non-humans with a Cerberus crew. Although...I wish you'd told me ahead of time that you had a Justicar on board..."

"Is there something we should know?" Garrus asked, in a tone that made it hard to tell whether he was being serious or not.

"Nothing that bears repeating, but let me give you one piece of advice, babe. And when a matriarch gives you advice, you should listen."

"So what is this sage advice, hmm?"

She stood back from the bar. "Never mix alcohol and high explosives, unless you like to party really, _really _hard."

Shepard took a sip of his drink (not even knowing what it was) and laughed. "Well I think we've got plenty of both on this ship.

Aethyta changed the subject. "So how'd you get a Justicar to join your crew? Most of them have egos the size of a planet, which is big even for asari."

"Samara was impressed by our 'hopeless cause'. That, and I helped her hunt down an Ardat-Yakshi." He refrained from telling her that this particular Ardat-Yakshi happened to be Samara's daughter.

That was enough to surprise the matriarch. "An Ardat-Yakshi, huh. Looks like you've had the full asari cultural experience. I take it she tried to seduce you?"

"She 'tried'," he said, making air quotes. "But she was a pretentious git, really. Her taste in music was terrible; I don't care if metalheads hate me for saying it, but Burzum sucked ass."

"As I told Tali," Garrus said, "I don't think there's a woman alive who can seduce you, commander."

"Says you," Aethyta muttered under her breath.

Shepard stood up. "Anyway, I should get back to work. I'd take another drink, but I don't the crew wants to see their commander drunk."

The last thing Shepard heard as he neared the elevator was the matriarch claiming that, if she were in charge of this mission, she would be drunk _all the time._

* * *

The _Normandy's_ CIC was the beating heart of the ship; its tactical centre. There all the information from the ships sensors, weapons, and communications was brought together and supplied to the commanding officer. A large holographic map of the galaxy hung in the air, around which were several navigation and engineering consoles. Past the galaxy map were yet more consoles, arranged into two rows, mostly dedicated to monitoring the various ships' systems. Most of these were currently unoccupied, although Shepard thought he saw one of the crewman playing a video game on his console, switching it off the second he caught sight of the commander.

"The Illusive Man wishes to speak with you, commander," said Yeoman Chambers, Shepard's administrative assistant (she disliked the term "secretary").

"I don't suppose he'd be so gracious as to actually tell me what this is about?"

"No, I'm afraid not. There's only this little light on my console, see; it comes on whenever he wants to speaks to you."

"I see. Anything else?"

"Not right now, but I did just have a chat with your friend Tali. I like her." She spoke in her usual cheery tone, something Shepard had always found a bit annoying. If there were anyone on the _Normandy_ that did not seem like Cerberus material at all, it was Chambers.

"Tali's a good friend; we've been through a lot, and she's had a trying couple of years."

She grinned at him. "Just friends, commander?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, my female intuition tells me she wants to be more than just friends."

He laughed aloud. "That's funny...wait, you're serious, aren't you?"

"Of course I am!" she said, sounding a bit offended. "I can tell from her body language. She turns to look at you the moment you enter the room, and her gaze is always on you wherever you go. But I wouldn't count on her making the first move."

In the back of his mind, Shepard knew that this should hardly come as a surprise. A man of his reputation would doubtlessly attract the attention of a great many women, but hearing it about Tali was different somehow. "But how can you be sure? She's a quarian; for all I know their body language is totally different from ours."

"Maybe," Kelly replied, not sounding at all convinced. "But I still think there's a definite attraction there. You should talk to her, commander. It's not very nice to leave a girl pining away like that!"

"I, uh, will," he muttered before heading to the debriefing room.

The _Normandy_ was equipped with a quantum entanglement communications device, which allowed instantaneous transmission across any distance. Upon learning of this device, Shepard had asked EDI how, precisely, it worked, telling her that it was impossible to encode data onto entangled pairs of particles. EDI had answered him by explaining the communication device actually violated several laws of physics, but gave her assurance that any possible damage to reality as a result of these impossibilities would be confined to "parallel universes no one cares about."

The table lowered into the floor and the room went dark, replaced a moment later with a holographic projection of the Illusive Man's office. One advantage of the entanglement communications device was that there was no actual signal emitted, making it impossible to determine the Illusive Man's exact location. All Shepard knew was that it was somewhere close to a star, no doubt so that his ship or space station was lost in the star's intense radiation. The star itself was shown through an ultraviolet filter, allowing one to see its roiling and churning photosphere.

"Shepard," said the Illusive Man, taking a drag from his cigarette. Few humans smoked any more, having had its negative health effects drilled into them for more than two centuries. That hadn't stopped aliens from picking up the habit, however, and now non-humans made up the majority of tobacco companies' market share.

In addition to his smoking habit, the Illusive Man had another bad habit in his terrible posture. He always sat slouching in his chair, giving him an air of smug indifference.

"By now Miranda has informed you of the recent hacking attempts against Cerberus and the _Normandy._"

"And I'm guessing you have more information on it?" he replied, crossing his arms. Information was the the one thing he could trust the Illusive Man to provide, although he was very selective in what he provided.

He took a sip from his glass, doubtlessly some exceedingly expensive drink. "A few hours ago one of our lab ships, the _MSV Rosalina,_ went dark. They managed to get off a distress call, indicating that they were under attack by an unknown enemy before communications were jammed. Shepard, that ship was carrying a Geth Prime with a fully intact memory core. I don't have to tell you how valuable it would be to Cerberus' cyberweapons division."

"And you think this is related to the hacking attempt?"

"I doubt the timing of the events is a coincidence, nor is the fact that our mutual friend obtained information on Project Overlord. Whoever's behind these attacks is rather interested in the geth, it seems."

"Wait, Miranda said that she had no idea what Cerberus files had been downloaded?"

"The virus deleted all traces of its activity, but we were able to reconstruct some of the lost data. From what we've been able to tell, it transmitted data on Project Overlord and nothing else."

"Then it can't be the Collectors or the Reapers. The geth worship them; if they wanted information on the geth they wouldn't have to take it by force. This sounds like a problem for Cerberus, not me." He got the sense that Illusive Man was going to ask him to investigate the matter anyway.

He let out a long puff of smoke, making Shepard glad that he wasn't here in person to inhale the noxious fumes. "I thought the same thing. But the individual or individuals behind this attack have displayed a great interest in you. According to my sources, someone has been retrieving your service history and psychological profile from Alliance databases, and I have every reason to believe that the same person was behind the attacks on Cerberus."

"All right, I'll check it out," said Shepard, knowing full that he was being manipulated into doing something for Cerberus. But he was too troubled by the implications of all this to just let it go. "Send the coordinates of your ship to Joker."

"Already sent. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to have a discussion with my personal assistant regarding him bringing me Laphroaig instead of Lagavulin. He must learn the consequences of failure." The Illusive Man's office then faded away, replaced by the familiar briefing room.

The coordinates he specified were several days away, which would give Shepard ample time to think about what sort of person was behind all these recent events. Yet the only thing he could think of were the yeoman's remarks about Tali. A human woman developing an attraction to him was hardly unexpected, nor would it be coming from a race such as the asari. But a quarian? Would someone from such an insular people ever develop an attraction to another species? His first instinct was to just dismiss as one of his crewmember's idle fancy, but he knew that there was more to it than that.

Later that day, after Shepard had retired to his quarters, he began doing a few extranet searches on interspecies relationships involving quarians. Sadly, there was very little data available, although his search did bring up numerous racist jokes:

_Q: Five quarians get into a Tennekont and fly into a black hole. What's the tragedy?_

_A: A Tennekont seats six quarians._

_Q: How is a quarian like a vending machine?_

_A: Neither work, but both take your money._

_Q: What's the most disgusting thing you can find in a quarian's suit?_

_A: A quarian._

Aside from such pieces of offensive humour, most of the results linked back the film _Fleet and Flotilla,_ which dealt with quarian/turian relationships. It wasn't the sort of movie Shepard liked, mainly on account of the fact that he hated romance stories, and that there were not enough explosions in it. The movie had been made into an "interspecies relationship simulator." although Shepard hadn't experienced that, either. Joker, on the other hand, had obviously played through it many times, judging by his online gamer profile:

_Statistics for user J0k3r_SR2:_

_Fleet and Flotilla (Uncensored Edition) – Recent Achievements:_

_Death By Snu-Snu: As an Ardat-Yakshi, kill 25 people by melding with them_

_Bigger Is Better In Bed: Romance a krogan_

_Once You Go Blue...: Romance an asari_

_Not Immune To Your Charms: Romance a quarian_

_What Is This Thing You Call Love: Romance a geth_

_Ain't No Cure For Love: Quarian partner died from post-coital infection_

* * *

Down on the crew deck, Tali sat with Garrus, Kasumi at the mess hall table, while Zaeed and Kelly Chambers sat opposite. The grizzled veteran was once again regaling her with a story, which no doubt involved a horrendous amount of violence and bloodshed.

"...and this bar was the only place on that whole goddamn shithole of a planet we could get drinks. So we go in, sit ourselves down at the bar, and are just about to ready to get bloody pissed when this batarian starts giving me stink eye. 'The hell you looking at?' I say. Next thing I know he shoves a gun in my face and tells me he could kill every human on the planet and get away with it."

"So, uh, what did you do?" Kelly asked, somewhat nervously.

"Poor bastard wasn't quite as fast on the trigger as I was with my knife. I swear there wasn't anything so bloody sweet as sticking six inches of hardened steel between that batarian's ribs."

"And the people in the bar were okay with that?" she exclaimed.

"Nah, turns out his friends were all there, celebrating his birthday. They nearly blew through my shields before I took cover behind the counter. Tossed a few incendiary grenades their way and fried the whole lot of em'. 'Course it also started a fire that burned the whole damn bar to the ground. Long story short, five of us walked into that bar, and I was the only one who walked out alive. Taught me one thing, though: every bar in the galaxy is seconds away from turning into a slaughterhouse. Every goddamn one."

Tali wasn't paying any attention, conversing with Garrus and Kasumi instead. "So that's the history of my country, really," said Kasumi. "I have to admit Japan hasn't really been the same ever since the government changed our national anthem to the _Super Mario Bros._ theme song."

"A good national anthem should rouse the spirit," said Garrus. "It needs passages about rivers running red with the blood of your enemies, the flames of wrath consuming all those who stand against you, that sort of thing."

Kasumi glared at him. "You know, I can never tell when you're being serious or not." She then glanced over at the newly-constructed bar, seeing Aethyta and Samara talking quietly. "I wonder what they're talking about? The two of them are about as different as you can get."

Garrus looked back briefly. "There's about two thousand years between them, so it's probably some lofty, rarefied conversation far beyond us mere mortals."

"So, you two know Shepard better than anyone else, am I right?" she asked, changing the subject. "I have to ask - any idea on what sort of woman he'd be into?"

"Do humans prepare for high-risk missions like that?" Garrus wondered aloud.

"I don't think Shepard is interested in that kind of...dalliance," Tali added.

She looked offended at this. "I wasn't talking about some one-night stand. If there's anyone on this ship that screams 'needs a woman' it's Shepard."

Tali was about to point out that maybe Shepard didn't _want_ female companionship when all of a sudden there was a noticeable hush that came over the deck. The cause of all this was Jack, a biotic of extreme power, quite capable of ripping through bulkheads with her abilities. She also had a hair-trigger temper, meaning that everyone walked on eggshells whenever she was around. Even Shepard was wary of her, as Tali never failed to notice the apprehensive expression on his face whenever he went down to the engineering subdeck to speak with her. Luckily Jack rarely left her "quarters," only coming to the higher decks to get food from the mess hall.

She was heading towards Miranda's office, fists clenched, and with an expression of pure rage on her face. A moment later Shepard followed her, obviously hoping to defuse the situation.

"Jack and Miranda must _really_ hate each other," Kasumi noted.

"You're just noticing that now?" Garrus said.

From Miranda's office they could hear the sounds of muffled shouting and things being tossed about.

"You know, if this were a turian ship, we wouldn't have this problem," Garrus continued. "If two crewmen have a score a settle, they can settle it in the ring. Maybe we ought to start doing that on the _Normandy._"

Tali's eyes went wide. "You mean you actually have people fighting each other on your ships? That's horrible! No quarian would ever fight with his own shipmates!"

"It's supervised, so no one's going to get hurt. Well, at least not hurt _badly._ Better to settle grudges before the mission than have them become an issue later."

Kasumi wasn't convinced. "Yeah, but I think Jack and Miranda would rip each other to shreds. Not that everyone would be totally upset to see Miranda go."

"What do you mean?" said Tali.

"People think she's bossy and overbearing, like she's compensating for something." She then leaned in closer and lowered her voice. "Don't tell anyone you got this from me, but I heard that, while the ship was getting the new armour on Illium, she had sex with some guy down in engineering."

Garrus grunted dismissively. "Come on, you really think she'd do something like that? I mean, not that I'd know anything about human sexual behaviour or anything..."

Engineers Ken and Gabriella, having just come off their shift, joined the rest of them at the table, already in the middle of some argument.

"Don't be daft, woman! I'll not be having any of that bloody Space Dynamics garbage on this ship. It'd be like watering down a fine scotch. Speaking of which, have you talked to our new asari bartender?"

"No, have you?"

"Aye, and the damn woman doesn't know a thing! I tried giving her an Islay single malt, and she said it was the worst crap she ever tasted. Then I told her about haggis, and she said that if I mentioned it again she'd rip out my spine and beat me to death with it."

Gabriella couldn't help laughing at that, while Tali was just confused. "What is haggis, anyway?"

The prospect of explaining it to Tali was enough to get him rather excited. "It's a traditional Scottish delicacy. You take a sheep's heart, liver, and lungs, mix them together with some spices, and then simmer it in the sheep's stomach for a few hours."

Tali wondered if he were joking, but from his tone, Ken was being completely serious. "That's...disgusting."

"You know Tali, for a quarian, you act like a real sassenach sometimes..."

"All right, getting back to our original topic of discussion," Kasumi said, "I'm making it my personal mission to find Shepard a woman before we go flying off into the storm. So tell me, do you think he likes his women to be the sweet and wholesome type, or the dark and dangerous type? I don't think he gets along too well with Miranda or Jack, so I guess that means dark and dangerous is out. He's a spacer, so he'd probably like someone who's spent a lot of time on ships...then there was that whole nasty business on Akuze, so maybe he wants someone who knows what it's like to lose an entire squad. And with all that's happened, being dead for two years and having to work with Cerberus, he'd want someone he can trust...someone he's been through a lot with. And don't quote me on this, but I think he has a thing for the colour purple. So, do we have anyone like that on board?"

"I can think of a few people," Garrus said.

Tali wasn't paying any attention to their conversation, instead watching the door to Miranda's office, half-expecting something or someone to come flying out any second. Instead, Shepard and Jack walked out, with Shepard looking relieved and Jack looking (moderately) less angry.

"So, which one of those two women would win in a fight?" Ken asked out of the blue.

"Jack, duh!" Gabriella replied. "Jack would toss her about like a ragdoll!"

"Aye, but Miranda's got a fair bit of cushioning, if you knew what I mean."

"Like I said, we should have full-contact sparring matches," Garrus added. "We could hold them down in the cargo bay, maybe start taking bets..."

Tali sighed. Were all turians like this, filled with terrible ideas about how a ship should be run? On second thought, it was probably just Garrus.


	4. The Reverse Midas Touch

Chapter 4 – The Reverse Midas Touch

* * *

"Just a heads up, commander, if that ship starts making transmissions in Latin, I'm getting the hell out of here."

The _MSV Rosalina_ was adrift, with several sections of hull torn apart from mass accelerator fire. All the impacts were in the engineering section, meaning that the ship's attackers had targeted the _Rosalina's _engines and nothing else. Clearly they weren't willing to risk damaging the ship's cargo – a fully intact Geth Prime. That was a valuable prize indeed, as a Geth Prime was the largest bipedal geth platform that Shepard had ever encountered, being essentially a walking tank. That its memory core was completely undamaged made it an even rarer find.

"Any lifesigns, Joker?"

EDI answered for him. "I detecting one lifesign at the ship's bridge, very faint. I am detecting no synthetic signatures; it appears that the attackers have taken possession of the Geth Prime aboard the _Rosalina._"

The _Rosalina_ looked like your typical cargo vessel, without any hull markers to indicate that it belonged to Cerberus. That was rather atypical of them, as Cerberus generally enjoyed plastering their logo over everything regardless of how obvious it made the ship look, the _Normandy_ included. Along with installing the new armour, Shepard had ordered the outer hull of the ship stripped of all conspicuous Cerberus logos. In the one of place of one he had the words 'Who Dares, Wins' printed, thinking it a fitting motto for their mission.

As there was a wounded individual aboard the _Rosalina,_ Shepard was bringing Mordin Solus along in case medical attention was necessary. Garrus and Tali rounded out the rest of his squad, and for the first time he found himself wondering why they were always the one to accompany him on the majority of his missions. It was not that he questioned the competence of the rest of his team, but rather, he simply trusted these two individuals more than the others. They had been with him since the beginning of his life as a Spectre, and they had been willing to continue working alongside him despite his association with Cerberus. That counted for a great deal, in his opinion, especially considering his ever-shrinking circle of friends. Shepard could count on one hand the number of people he trusted with his life.

Joker brought the _Normandy_ up alongside the _Rosalina,_ which was around three times as large. He and the three others of his squad gathered in the airlock, waiting for the decontamination cycle to finish. Mordin appeared rather impatient with the procedure, which was understandable given that the salarian professor seemed to think about five times as fast as other people. That was typical of his species, who were best summed up by the phrase, "the light that burns the brightest burns the shortest." Salarians processed information far quicker than other species, and required much less rest and "down time." The cost, of course, was that they possessed only a quarter of the lifespan of a typical human.

Tali was fidgeting and moving about nervously. "Are...are you sure you want me along for this, Shepard?" she asked in a rather nervous tone.

"Something bothering you, Tali?"

"It's just that...every time I've gone aboard an abandoned ship, something bad has happened."

Garrus couldn't resist the opportunity to tease her. "Random catastrophes _do_ seem to follow in your wake..."

"We've dealt with the unexpected before," Shepard assured her. "You remember that time we investigated the missing research team, and found that they had all been turned into husks?"

She glared at him. "Don't remind me."

The airlock doors opened, revealing the primary docking area of the _Rosalina._ There were numerous corpses scattered about, some still with weapons in their hands. Obviously this had been where the attackers had begun their assault, easily overwhelming the crew. Shepard noticed that there weren't many noticeable bullet holes on the walls, suggesting that the attackers were very precise in their shooting. There were no blast marks or scorches to be seen, meaning that heavy weapons or grenades had not been used. It was impossible to say for certain, but his gut feeling was that this was no job by some ragtag band of mercenaries or pirates. This was the work of professionals.

"Another Cerberus research facility with everyone dead," Shepard said flatly. "I'm getting real tired of seeing this."

Mordin knelt over one of the corpses and began scanning it with his omni-tool, trying to determine what weapon had killed the poor man. Each gun had its own unique signature that it left upon every bullet it fired, which could be traced back to the manufacturer and model. Garrus was probably an expert at this sort of thing, given his time at C-Sec and his vast (and somewhat disturbing) knowledge of firearms.

"Found anything interesting?"

"Wound tract clear indication of penetration trauma, yet no projectile remains in body. Lack of exit wound suggests projectile did not penetrate completely. Curious."

Garrus looked down at the body. "You mean he was shot with a gun that didn't leave a bullet behind?"

"Impossible to say. Need to examine other bodies."

The four of them moved cautiously through the docking area, guns kept at the ready all the while. Shepard knew better than to let his guard down, knowing how many times he walked into a seemingly safe situation in the past, only to be ambushed.

The interior of the _Rosalina_ was typical of most Cerberus facilities, being cold and sterile, with the sole colours being gunmetal grey and glossy black. Their logo was everywhere, as if the crewmen were in danger of forgetting whom they were working for. There were fewer bodies the further they went, suggesting that the majority of the crew had made their stand at the airlock. According to Mordin, all of them displayed the same strange wounds with no signs of the projectiles that had caused them. That would make it impossible to determine who the attackers had been based on ballistic evidence.

"So tell me, Tali," Garrus said, "since you're a self-proclaimed expert on creepy abandoned spaceships, when do the really bad things start happening? Right when you come aboard, or does it come later?"

"Usually it happens exactly the moment you think you're safe."

If someone were still alive, then time was of the essence. They hastened to the bridge, which would normally have been sealed in the event of an attack, but was curiously open at present. Shepard guessed that the attackers had probably hacked the security system to grant them access to the entire ship. If so, they had likely erased any surveillance feeds or sensor logs as well.

The bridge was a slaughterhouse. All of the officers lay dead, some still in their seats, and it looked as though they had been killed with a weapon designed to cause as much blood spray as possible. The captain had fared the worst, as he had been impaled on a large metal rod sticking out of one of the bulkheads. Attached to one of the spears was a large sheet of paper upon which the words 'WE STOLE YOUR SHIT' were written, with 'CERBERUS GO DIE' on the other side.

"Now that's just excessive," Garrus quipped, looking up at the captain's body.

Shepard heard someone moving about behind, and he spun around to see one of the crewmen standing up, clutching a wound on his side. "Damn, I didn't think our message had gotten through. I'm first officer Peters of the _Rosalina,_ and I'm sure as hell glad to see you." He groaned in pain and steadied himself a nearby console, and Shepard could see that his wound was bleeding rather profusely.

"Mordin, can you give a shot of medi-gel?"

"Will do what I can."

Medi-gel, the all-purpose healing salve, was technically illegal under genetic modification laws, but had proven to be so indispensable that everyone ignored this fact. It was manufactured by the Sirta Foundation, who marketed it with the slogan, "Whether it's a skinned knee or a sucking chest wound, medi-gel can help!"

"Who attacked you?" Shepard asked as soon as Peters was stabilised.

"Don't know; they came outta nowhere in some type of ship I've never seen before. They took out our engines with a single volley, then moved to board."

"But didn't you see the attackers after they boarded?"

"We did, but..." He trailed off for a moment, as if recollection were difficult. "They were wearing these suits that covered them head to toe. All black, no insignias or nothing. I couldn't even tell what species they were. Could've been human, batarian, maybe even turian or quarian, who knows. And they weren't just your typical pirates or mercs, either! These guys were professionals. We never stood a chance. I survived by playing dead after I got shot."  
Tali was busy trying to extract the ship's sensor logs, which might provide some information on whomever had raided the _Rosalina. _"The attackers must have wiped the ship's memory core," she said. "But I've saved a copy to my omni-tool; I might be able to reconstruct some of it back on the _Normandy._"

"You mean there's nothing left at all?" Shepard asked.

"They were very thorough...wait, there's a bit of code still left in the memory core..." Tali then began backing away from the computer console. "Shepard, we have to get off this ship! Now!"

A second later the bridge was bathed in red light. "_Self-destruct sequence initiated,"_ announced a computerised voice. _"Self-destruct in thirty seconds. This ship's self-destruct mechanism is provided by SureSplode, a division of Calian Technologies Ltd. SureSplode – When your ship, positively, absolutely must be obliterated, use SureSplode!"_

Shepard guessed that the attackers had programmed the ship's computer to initiate the self-destruct procedure when someone tried to access the memory core. The four of them scrambled back to the airlock, slowed down by Peters who was in a great deal of pain.

Shepard called up the _Normandy_ on his radio. "Joker! The ship's set to blow! Get ready to move as soon as we're on board!"

_"Fifteen seconds to self-destruct. SureSplode – Complete destruction of your vessel or your money back!"_

As he raced towards the airlock Shepard thought of his daring rescue of Liara from an erupting volcano, and wondered at how he always seemed to find himself in situations were he was seconds away from annihilation. He wished that, just for once, total destruction could happen at a pace that would permit a leisurely escape.

The five of them piled into the airlock, at which point Joker put the _Normandy's_ engines to their maximum. The _Rosalina_ exploded just two seconds after that, being utterly consumed in an enormous fireball. True to the company's claim, the SureSplode self-destruct mechanism had completely destroyed the ship, leaving a cloud of debris consisting of pieces no larger than an escape pod.

Mordin did not appear overly troubled by it all. "Last-second escape from fiery death. Outcome not entirely unexpected.

"Looks like Tali was right," Garrus said wryly. "She came along, and something bad happened. Maybe we should leave her behind next time."

"Or maybe I'm the only one keeping something even worse from happening?" she retorted.

Joker wasn't too pleased with yet another close-call. "Do you have some sort of reverse Midas touch, commander?" he said as they walked past the cockpit. "Like, everything you lay on your hands on ends up being destroyed or something?"

He shrugged. "Look at this way: the ship wasn't really destroyed, it's just been structurally rearranged to the point where its continued use as a spacefaring vessel was no longer an option."

"Great, maybe I'll use that line if we end up losing another _Normandy._"

* * *

When Shepard retired to his quarters at the end of the day, he was dismayed to find that there was a rather angry message from Aria T'Loak, the self-proclaimed "queen" of Omega:

_What the hell are you playing at, Shepard? A few days ago I start getting word that a "sentient grizzly bear" is setting up his own operation on my turf! I sent my men to deal with him and he mauled them to death. When I finally got a chance to speak with him, he said YOU were the one who set him free! I don't give a damn what your reasons were; I'm blaming you for this. Next time you set foot on my station, I'll be waiting for you._

_PS: I've been told this grizzly bear is not only sentient but a biotic as well. What the hell do you humans do to your wildlife?_

This did not concern him overmuch, given that Shepard had no intention of returning to that hellhole station any time soon. Instead they were on their way to the Citadel to drop off the sole survivor of the _Rosalina._

The intercom crackled to life, making him jump. "Commander, it's Dr. Chakwas. I need to speak with you down in the med bay."

"I'm on my way."

Curious as to what this was all about, he headed over to the elevator, making sure that his hamster had enough food and water first. In spite of all that had happened today, his thoughts were still on Tali and what the yeoman had said about her. He didn't know why it kept bothering him so much. Maybe it was just idle curiosity. Having spent most of his life on one or another, Shepard had never had any sort of long-term relationship with a woman. There had been a few flings now and then, usually during shore leave, but those never amounted to anything. He didn't know if he were even _capable_ of having a meaningful relationship without having it all go horribly wrong, destroying everything in an all-consuming explosion of awkwardness.

Dr. Chakwas was standing right outside the med bay doors, looking rather perturbed. "What's this about, doctor?"

"It's Peters, commander. I'm afraid he's dead."

"Dead?" he exclaimed. "His wounds weren't that severe! How did this happen?"

"He insisted that he was well enough not to require my care and left the med bay. Then he...exploded."

"Exploded?" he said flatly, wondering if he were hearing correctly.

"Most Cerberus operatives have cyanide capsules in their molars, for use in case they are captured. Peters had an ocular flashbang instead, only whoever installed it must have calibrated it incorrectly. Instead of merely causing fatal brain damage, it ripped him completely apart."

"But he wasn't captured, so why did he activate it?"

"I don't know, commander. My guess is that it was a software bug in the flashbang itself."

He froze. "Wait, so there could be any number of Cerberus operatives out there with these ocular flashbangs in their heads, who could suddenly explode at any moment?"

"Quite possibly. Fortunately I don't believe anyone on board the _Normandy_ has them installed."

"I see. Guess I shouldn't be too surprised at this, given Cerberus' reputation for making a complete hash of things."

"One more thing, commander," said Chakwas. "I would advise not going into the men's washroom, at least not for the next few days."

He shuddered quietly at the gory mental image. "I...won't."

* * *

Later that day Miranda informed him that EDI had completed her trace of the recent hacking attempt on the _Normandy._ According to her, the hack had initiated at a public extranet terminal on one of the wards on the Citadel, which was good news as they had already set out for the Citadel to drop off Peters, right before his rather unfortunate accident. Shepard certainly didn't envy Gardner for having to clean_ that_ mess up.

Unfortunately, a single extranet terminal did not look like much to go on. All someone had to do was upload the virus from there, and that could have been just about anyone. Still, even if they found nothing, a stopover at the Citadel would give them the chance to stock up on supplies. It was one of the few places where Tali could find the nutrient paste that quarians consumed as "food." He always pitied her for not being able to enjoy the vast array of culinary delights available in the galaxy. He realised that, if he ever did decide to pursue a relationship with her, there would be many things that they simply could not do together. Surely Tali knew all of this? And she still wanted to be with him? That meant her interest was definitely not casual.

Shepard wondered if he should tell someone about this. Was there anyone on the _Normandy_ who had experience with this sort of thing? Was there anyone in the _galaxy_ who had experience with human/quarian relationships? Was he crazy for even considering this? Then again, sometimes crazy was the best way to go...

He headed up to the cockpit when they were nearing the Citadel, glad to be back here after several months flying about the galaxy. It was probably the place most familiar to him after the _Normandy_,though he couldn't ever picture himself actually living there. The station appeared out of the nebular gases, the five arms of the wards resembling a blooming flower (or a dead crab washed up on the beach, for those who did not appreciate the Citadel's aesthetics). As this _Normandy_ was a civilian ship, they were forced to berth in one of the more crowded civilian docks, next to several other vastly inferior vessels.

According to EDI, the extranet terminal where the hacking attack had come from was on one of the Wards. For that reason, Shepard brought along Tali and Kasumi, his two tech experts. Garrus decided to tag along, thinking that his presence was necessary to prevent _Tali's _presence from causing any catastrophes to occur (that, and he wasn't about to pass up the chance for some "good-natured" ribbing). Finally, Matriarch Aethyta came along as well, as the extranet terminal was located near Serrice Spirits, a famous asari liquor store that carried a wide variety of exotic (and expensive) intoxicants, and she was needing to replenish her stocks. The rest of the crew took the opportunity for a brief bit of shore leave, heading off in all directions. Strangely, Miranda once again elected to remain aboard the ship, claiming that she "had work to do," although refusing to specify the nature of this "work," of course.

"So Garrus," Aethyta said as they rode an elevator up to Zakera Ward, "I bet you got a lot of action in C-Sec."

"It was never boring, sure. There were always criminal elements on the Wards that needed cleaning out."

"No, I was thinking of another sort of 'action,' if you know what I mean. Women go nuts for a man in uniform."

He fidgeted uncomfortably at the question. "Well, sometimes suspects would offer, ahem, _compensation_ for me not arresting them. I was always above that sort of thing, of course."

"Hmph, you turians...how _do _you go about finding women, anyway?"

Garrus shrugged. "Usually with violence. Turian men have been known to kill each other over women. Very messy. That's why we rarely chose partners outside our own species, though human females do seem to have a...puzzling...attraction towards us."

"I can't imagine why," said Aethyta, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "A hide like sandpaper, razor-sharp teeth, the lack of anything that can be considered an 'ass'..."

The elevator glided to a stop, mercifully bring their conversation to an end. They found themselves at the very bottom level of Zakera Ward, staring up at the towering skyscrapers above them. A breathable atmosphere was maintained only to a height of around seven metres, meaning that most of the structures higher up had to be sealed against the vacuum. Below that, however, were a large number of open markets, stalls, and kiosks selling every sort of product one could imagine. Shepard thought that the lower levels of the Wards would be generally more impoverished than the upper levels, but so far that did not appear to be the case. No one species dominated this level, either, though there was a noticeable lack of asari. "We can't stand the thought of being beneath anyone else," Aethyta explained after he pointed this out.

Kasumi, who had remained mostly silent up until this point, was presently gazing up at one of the many skyscrapers lining the Wards. "That's the headquarters of the United Banking Corporation. They have an ultra-secure vault where their wealthier clientèle can store valuable items. One time I broke in and stole Councillor Velarn's safety deposit box."

Shepard stopped in his tracks. "You stole from the turian councillor? He must have been pissed!"

"Yeah, I guess you could say that. Sometimes I like to hang around after a theft, just to see how people react when they find out their precious trinkets have disappeared. I've always wanted to know if people really throw back their heads and scream '_Nooooo!'_ when something bad happens, like in movies. So far it hasn't happened yet."

No sooner had she spoken these words than they heard someone call Aethyta by name. The voice belonged to another asari, a much younger one, perhaps (Shepard always had trouble determining their age from their appearance).

"Aethyta?" she said with a haughty sneer on her face. "What brings _you_ here? Got tired of tending bar on Illium and came here looking for another menial, degrading job?"

"Rasha," Aethyta hissed, and it was clear to all that these two had a history.

"I've just returned from Thessia, and I must say the laughter from when you suggested building new mass relays is _still_ echoing all across the planet. Oh, and what was it that you said young asari spend all their time doing? 'Whoring their way across the entire galaxy?' You always did have a knack for childish insults. Must have been that krogan father of yours."

She crossed her arms. "Is that some point to your blathering, or are you just testing your mouth out to see if it still works?"

"I thought asari greatly respected matriarchs?" Shepard asked aloud.

"That's another lie we tell aliens," Aethyta whispered to him.

"And now your with Shepard," Rasha continued, sounding even more contemptuous. "No doubt as some pathetic hanger-on! You think you're going to go gallivanting across the galaxy on some grand adventure? You'll be lucky if you don't throw out your back picking up a gun, old woman!"

"So much for respecting your elders," Garrus quipped.

Rasha glared at him. "I certainly don't respect our elders when they act like drunken perverts!"

Aethyta stepped forward, fists clenched. "Hey, who are you calling 'drunken'?"

"Oh, you want to fight me, old woman? Didn't you once say that you never practised your biotics?"

"I did, and you know what else?" The matriarch had a wide grin on her face, making it clear to Shepard what was coming.

"What?"

"_I lied."_

In the blink of an eye Rasha was enveloped in a blue glow, then flung at high speed into the air. She flew a good fifty feet before landing across the street in a rubbish bin.

"Damn kids need to learn some respect," Aethyta muttered. "Dad always said that respect begins with an ass-kicking."

"Remind me never to forget to pay my drink tab at your bar," Kasumi said.

The extranet terminal was located in a cafe which was rather busy at this time of day. While Aethyta went off to buy liquor, the remaining three huddled around the terminal, which looked quite scuffed up and abused. Worse, there was some sort of weird, unidentifiable goo all over the keyboard. Why it did not use a holographic interface was anyone's guess.

"These terminals have cameras built in, to catch anyone tampering with them," Garrus explained. "I should point out, commander, that tampering with a public extranet terminal is punishable by a 500 credit fine."

"Well we'll be subtle about it. Tali, can you retrieve the camera footage from when the hack was made?"

She went to work without a word, easily bypassing the terminal's security. Shepard watched her as she worked, amazed at how quickly she could hack through a system.

"Is that a command line?" Garrus said, peeking at the monitor. "Do people still use those?"

"And look at the commands," Shepard added. "'_awk_?' '_sed_?' '_grep_?' Are those commands or the sounds of bad indigestion?"

Kasumi rolled her eyes. "Haven't any of you ever used Linux? I hear it's poised to take over the desktop and omni-tool market any day now."

"Yeah, that's what they've been saying for the past two centuries," Shepard retorted.

Tali ignored them. "I've got it; the footage from the time of the attack." She played it on her omni-tool, which showed a middle-aged human with a trimmed beard and moustache uploading something from an OSD to the terminal. The man looked annoyed, as if he were trying to retrieve his food from an uncooperative vending machine. He hardly looked the sort of person who was launching sophisticated hacking attacks against Cerberus.

"Wait, I know him!" said Kasumi. "That's Roy Adler. He's some sort of blowhard radio host; you know, the bull-headed type who's always full of bluster and outrage?"

Shepard frowned. "Are you sure this is from the right time, Tali? Why would he be the one behind the attacks?"

"I'm sure of it, Shepard. The malicious program was uploaded from his OSD."

"Perhaps we should pay Mr. Adler a visit?" Garrus suggested.

Kasumi was delighted at the prospect of that. "He owns some fancy penthouse up on the Presidium. While you're having a 'talk' with him, I'll break in and take everything not nailed down. And maybe a few things that are."

He was about try to talk her out of that, but realised that she'd just do it anyway, regardless of what he said. "All right, let's go to it, then."

Walking out of the cafe, they saw Aethyta exiting Serrice Spirits followed by an anti-gravity pallet loaded up with crates of liquor. Behind her was the store's owner, who was clearly upset at what was happening.

"You can't do this!" she snarled. "You can't buy up my entire stock!"

Aethyta didn't even look back at her. "Why not? I paid for everything. This is how things are when you're old and rich."

"But I have nothing left to sell, and I won't get restocked until next week!"

She shrugged. "Well I've got a crew that's on a suicide mission; you know how much booze they're gonna need? _A lot._ Now, are you going to help me haul this up to the ship or not?"


	5. In The Grim Darkness of the Far Future

Chapter 5 – In The Grim Darkness Of The Far Future, There Is Only WAAAGH!

* * *

Seeing the Presidium always brought back a flood of memories for Shepard. In a way, this was where it had all begun; where he had become the first human Spectre and set out on his roaring rampage across the galaxy. The Council had reinstated his Spectre status after the minor inconvenience that was him being dead, and he suspected that he would need that weight when he confronted this Mr. Adler. He didn't know anything about the man, as he was not a listener of talk radio, but his gut feeling was that he would not be a pleasant person to deal with.

Compared to the Wards, the Presidium was always quiet and peaceful, which certainly helped make the stressful jobs of diplomats and ambassadors a little less stressful. It was also home to numerous high-end apartments and hotels, meaning you couldn't walk ten metres without meeting someone wealthy or powerful. It was also the location of the Citadel Tower, the very heart of the Citadel's authority. Being averse to political machinations or bureaucracy, Shepard had absolutely no desire to visit that particular part of the Presidium. It was not that he had any great dislike of the Council (aside from the turian councillor, who always had a stick up his ass about something), but rather a simple acceptance of the fact that he knew as much about politics as Grunt knew about the finer points of existentialism.

He, Garrus, Kasumi, and Tali were all crammed into an elevator that was slowly making its way up to Roy Adler's penthouse. A speaker in the ceiling played a continuous broadcast from Citadel News, courtesy of Emily Wong.

_"A volus trade group has petitioned the Citadel Council to lift the embargo on the Lylat System. The Council voted unanimously to quash the motion following an impassioned speech by Councillor Velarn, who stated that the goods produced by those 'furry bastards' would never taint Citadel space. The Lylat System has been under Council embargo for the past two years, with continuous turian patrols near the relay leading to that system."_

_ "The Quarian Anti-Defamation League has publicly denounced the popular film '_Fleet and Flotilla'_, claiming that it grossly misrepresents quarian culture. A spokesperson for the league pointed out that the idea of a quarian/turian relationship is 'absurd' and that 'shared chirality of amino acids is not a solid foundation for a lasting relationship.' He later declared that 'no quarian would ever engage in a romantic relationship with an alien, at least no quarian who is not a very, very bad person'."_

Kasumi activated her cloak as the elevator gently slowed to a stop, planning to rob the place while Shepard talked with Mr. Adler. The doors opened to reveal a long, featureless hallway. Shepard never cared much for the sterile white and grey of the Presidium, finding that it too much resembled the interior of a hospital. A pair of guards stood by the entrance to Mr. Adler's penthouse, and Shepard found it patently laughable that a _radio host_ would think himself so important as to require armed guards to protect him.

"Hey, it...it's Shepard!" one of the guards exclaimed, looking like he had just soiled himself in excitement.

"Yeah, that's me," he said flatly. "I need to speak with Mr. Adler. Is he in?"

The guard grabbed his radio. "Mr. Adler, commander Shepard is here and he wants to see you."

"Shepard? Yes, yes, send him!" came an annoyed-sounding voice.

"I can't believe it's really you!" gushed the other guard. "I heard you killed thousands of geth on Eden Prime using only a knife!"  
"Uh, sure."

Shepard felt Kasumi, now totally invisible, brush against him as they headed inside. Roy Adler's penthouse was anything if not luxurious. Red, deep-pile carpet lined most of the floor, and the walls were covered in Victorian-style wallpaper and wainscoting that stood in hilarious contrast with everything else on the Citadel. The man was obviously a gun aficionado, judging by the numerous pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles hanging on the walls. A balcony, larger than most peoples' apartments, gave a commanding view of the entire Presidium, and that was where Mr. Adler stood at present, sipping some doubtlessly-expensive drink and smoking a large cigar. The man was quite corpulent, probably from having everything done for him, and rather repulsive in general, to the point where it almost hurt to look at him.

"Commander Shepard in my home!" he said, stretching his arms out like he were going to give him a hug. "This a rare honour." His expression turned sour, however, when he saw Garrus and Tali following him.

He was in no mood for cordiality. "Spare me the pleasantries, Mr. Adler, we know you're the one who tried to hack into Cerberus' databases, and the _Normandy._"

Roy froze, looking genuinely surprised. "What? What are you talking about?" His voice then became very hostile. "Cerberus has noble goals and I support them wholeheartedly!"

"We have footage from a public extranet terminal that shows you uploading a malicious program," Garrus said.

Roy just stared, dumbfounded. "I did upload a program, but it had nothing to do with Cerberus. At least, that's not what the man who gave it to me said. I...I've already said too much."

"Then what was it's purpose, and who gave it you?"

He crossed his arms. "It's part of an investigation I'm doing for my radio show, and I don't give away my sources, especially not to anyone affiliated with the Council! The mainstream media is bad enough with its blatant liberal bias; I don't need government muscling in!"

"Not the answer I was looking for," Shepard said, narrowing his eyes.

Adler wasn't threatened. "What, you're going to try to beat the information out of me? How will that look on the evening news, huh? 'Hero of the Alliance beats up radio host?'"

Now it was time for some fast talking, something Shepard considered himself rather good at. "I'm not going to hurt you, unfortunately, I can't say the same for my quarian friend here," he said, gesturing over at Tali. "If you don't start talking, she's going to start getting angry. You don't want that."

"Ha!" he said with a sneer. "You think I'm scared of some quarian beanpole? Get the hell out of here!"

"You _should_ be scared. She's crazy; completely insane. I once saw her rip a man's arms off and beat him to death with them. And if you _really_ piss her off, she'll take off her mask and breathe fire on you."

That was enough to take the wind out of Mr. Adler's sails. "Wha...what? Can quarians do that?"

"Of course they can. Just look at what happened to my turian friend here," he said, gesturing back at Garrus, who was all too happy to play along.

"It was...horrible," he said, looking down. "All I did was look at her the wrong way. The doctors say the scars on my face might heal with time but...the scars on my soul..."

"All right, all right!" he cried, immediately capitulating. "As part of my show I was doing some research on quarian criminal gangs down on the Wards. A quarian shopkeeper at the Rustbucket Salvage Shop named Prost told me he had information on one of the major gangs, and he gave me an OSD that was _supposed_ to contain that information, but the damn thing was blank! That's all I know, I swear!"

"Except that OSD wasn't blank," said Garrus. "It contained a virus that accessed Cerberus files and tried to hack into our ship's computer."

Roy began to fume. "That bucket-headed son of a bitch lied to me! And now Cerberus is going to be on my ass...great, just great!"

"Do you still have the OSD?" Shepard asked. "The virus probably wiped itself from the device, but we might be able to recover some of the data."

"Yeah, it's in my study, I'll go get it." Little did he know that Kasumi was quickly and quietly looting the place, making off with whatever she could cram into her pockets.

A few moments later Roy returned with the OSD, which his shoved into Shepard's hands. "Now please, get out!"

Before they even lifted a foot someone came running in from one of the other rooms; Shepard guessed he was a friend or associate of Mr. Adler. "Roy, you need to come see this! I was just in the parlour, and your antique hunting rifle's gone! Someone must have stolen it!"

"What? _Nooooo!"_

Still cloaked and standing in the room, Kasumi had a small thrill at hearing this.

* * *

"Fire-breathing quarians," Garrus said wryly as the elevator descended. "Never heard that one before."

Tali was completely floored by the prior exchange. "I can't believe that worked! How is that you can make people believe such ridiculous things?"

"Well no one ever accused a talk radio host of being too intelligent," he said. "Do you think you can get anything off that OSD?"

"You were right that the virus wiped it clean," she said. "But any delete commands are handled by the operating system and not the program itself, and most operating systems don't actually clear the data, just mark as being able to be overwritten. I should be able to recover some of it, at least."

"Good. Now we need to find this Prost fellow and have a little chat with him. I must admit it wouldn't surprise me if a quarian's behind all this. They've no love for Cerberus, and they'd probably be very interested in anything Project Overlord learned about the geth."

"But that doesn't explain why they were after information about the Lazarus Project," said Garrus, "or why they were accessing your Alliance records. I can't imagine why a quarian would be so interested in you personally." He spoke that last sentence in such a way that Tali knew he was subtly mocking her.

Shepard shrugged. "I guess we'll find out."

"You ever heard of this Prost person, Tali?" Garrus asked

"What...what kind of question is that?" she said, annoyed. "Because I'm a quarian, that means I'm personally acquainted with every single quarian in existence?"

"Well, aren't you?" he said teasingly. "I thought your race was very close-knit."

"But that doesn't mean..." She didn't finish, simply sighing in resignation. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"

"Doing what on purpose?" he asked innocently.

"Asking all these ridiculous questions, trying to annoy me."

"What? No, I'm just curious, honestly. You've really opened my eyes, Tali."

"_Bosh'tet,"_ she muttered under her breath. Unfortunately the elevator carriage was quiet enough for Garrus to hear it.

"Now now, there's no need to resort to childish insults...you buckethead."

"Why you-"

"All right!" said Shepard after remaining silent throughout the entire exchange. "I don't want you two coming to blows.

Following the Citadel's online directory of stores, they made their way to the Rustbucket Salvage Shop, which was located in a rather impoverished area of the Ward. That was a obvious to anyone who came to these parts, with dirty, scuffed up floors and walls, shabbier clothing on the populace, and more disconcerting, a large number of quarians compared to wealthier areas of the station. There were more C-Sec patrols as well, along with numerous signs that read "Beware of Pickpockets." While the whole place had a dismal atmosphere about, it was still far better than Omega, where dead bodies (and worse things) in the streets were a common sight. At least here there was some attempt at imposing the rule of law, as evidenced by a trio of C-Sec officers leading away a very drunk volus. Unlike quarians, the volus had no ability to tolerate alcohol at all, with only a small amount needed to put them into a stupor.

The Rustbucket Salvage Shop was a modestly-sized establishment, consisting of little more than shelves of components, most of which Shepard couldn't even hope to identify. The only person there was a quarian, who was busy cutting apart a piece of salvage with a torch.

"Prost?" said Shepard, hoping he wouldn't end up interrogating this person and that he'd just tell him what he wanted to know.

The quarian turned around, and he could see him narrowing his eyes behind his helmet. "You..." he growled, pointing at Tali.

"Do...I know you?" she said.

"No, but I know you, Tali'Zorah!" He slammed his hands down on the counter and leaned right in her face. "You killed my brother Prazza!"

Behind Tali, Prazza was perhaps the most famous quarian in the galaxy, or perhaps "infamous" was a better word. This was solely due to his performance in the pornographic magazine _Fornax_, which had been so unbelievably disgusting and offensive that it drove anyone who witnessed it to madness.

Tali looked over at Shepard, as if seeking reassurance for something. "He...Prazza never mentioned a brother."

Prost flung his arms into the air, flying in a rage. "Of course he wouldn't have mentioned it to a callous wretch like you! You could never hope to understand him...his extraordinary mind...and because of you his genius has been forever last to the galaxy! He was the soul of a Chaos God made flesh!"

"Prazza got himself killed," Tali said, not sound the slightest bit apologetic. Shepard assumed (correctly) that after spending two years with the man, Tali wasn't particularly sympathetic to Prazza's rather inglorious end.

"He only died because of your incompetent leadership!" Prost thundered, drawing several stares from people passing by. "You couldn't understand that Prazza wasn't a person, he was a _force!_ A force you couldn't control! And now I will have my revenge! Yesterday I purchased a Carnifex pistol that's sitting right under the shelf here. I was going to go hunt you down, but luckily for me you came bumbling along right when you did. The ancestors must have favoured me greatly for you to fall so easily into my clutches."

Shepard crossed his arms. "You realise that there's three of us and one of you, right? And that by the time you get that gun out from under the counter all three of us will have had enough time to draw our guns and shoot you? And, of course, you just told us what you were going to do, thus completely eliminating the element of surprise."

"Yes, it seems you haven't thought your cunning plan all the way through," Garrus added.

Prost raged, completely speechless at how easily he had been foiled. "I...but...my revenge..."

Shepard reached across the counter and grabbed Prost by the shoulder. "Look, we'll forget about all this, as long as you tell us about that OSD you gave to Mr. Adler."

He stepped back. "Uh, he told you about that? Look, I'm on Pilgrimage, see, but things haven't...haven't been going very well. One day I get this package, no name, just a message saying that it's from a fellow quarian and that its contents would help me on my Pilgrimage. Inside was an OSD, and the message said that all I had to do was upload it to an extranet terminal, and it would transmit Cerberus data regarding the geth back to the Migrant Fleet."

"So why did you give it to that radio host then?" said Shepard.

Anger flashed through his eyes. "Every other time that _bosh'tet_ gets on the air, he starts ranting about how quarians are a 'blight upon the galaxy' and how we're all 'criminals' and 'thieves.' Every quarian on this station wants to see him get what's coming to him. So when I get this OSD, I knew that Cerberus would trace it back to whoever uploaded the virus. That's probably why they gave it to me; so that I'd take the fall for it. I wasn't about to let that happen, so I gave it to that radio host instead and told him it'd help him with his 'investigation'. That's the truth, I swear!"

"All right, we believe you. Let's get back to the _Normandy._"

Prost wasn't going to let them leave without a few final words. "You may go, Tali'Zorah, but mark my words, one day I shall have my vengeance! The cry of _WAAAGH!_ shall be heard once again, and may it herald your doom!"

None of them knew that, several years hence, Prost would meet the exact same end as his brother – a rocket to the face. Had they known this, they might have had a laugh, although they would have felt rather bad about it afterwards.

* * *

That night was like nearly every other night for Shepard – he was spending it alone in his cabin. Not unless one counted his pet hamster which, according to the person who'd sold it to him, was not any ordinary hamster, but a "space hamster" that was supposed to have abilities lacking in typical rodents. So far he had not noticed any difference. This was actually his second pet hamster, as Grunt had rather nonchalantly eaten the first one.

At the moment he was trying to get to sleep – and failing. This whole business with the hacking attempts on Cerberus and the _Normandy_ kept tormenting him as minutes became hours. In all likelihood Miranda had been correct in her guess that the Shadow Broker was the one behind it, but his gut was telling him that there was more to it than that. It was not part of their mission, and he could not in good conscience devote too much time to it – not when there were far more pressing concerns – so why was it bothering him so? Maybe it was the thought that someone out there was gathering information on him, and they likely weren't using it for any wholesome purpose. The OSD they had taken from Roy Adler might lead them to the perpetrator, but that would have to wait until tomorrow when Tali would have time to analyse it.

Right now she was asleep, and he wondered how someone could sleep inside an environment suit. He knew what it was like wearing heavy combat gear, but imagining living his entire life in such a thing was beyond him. Quarians were denied so many simple pleasures in life – inhaling the scent of a flower, tasting a culinary delight, feeling the comforting touch of a loved one; these were all things the average quarian could hardly dream of experiencing in his lifetime. And all because of the mistakes of their ancestors some three centuries ago.

Frustrated by his inability to fall asleep, Shepard got dressed and headed to the elevator. His destination was the crew deck, hoping that Aethyta would still be around to offer up some intoxicants. Luckily she was, with an off-duty Joker being the only other person sitting at the counter. Mess Sergeant Gardner was nowhere to be seen, despite the fact that he was not scheduled to be off-duty for another hour. He had, apparently of his own authority, decided that the had earned a short vacation after having to clean Peters remains out of the men's washroom. Shepard wasn't about to argue with that.

"So why do they call you Joker?" said Aethyta, who was busy cleaning out some glasses. "You don't seem very funny to me. Come on, tell me a joke."

"All right, here's one: an asari walks into a bar. The bartender asks, 'Hey, why so blue?'"

"Funny," she said without a trace of emotion. "Now I got one for you: when you told your mum you wanted to be a pilot, she said, 'Sure, kid! Break a leg!'"

"Wh...what?" he exclaimed, sounding genuinely surprised. "Now _that's_ offensive!"

"Don't play with fire if you don't want to get burned, son."

Shepard took his seat at the counter, wondering what he would get. "You have anything that can help a man get to sleep?"

"What's keeping you up?" she asked with a sultry smirk on her face. "Thinking of me, maybe? Imagining waking up beside me in the morning?"

He was at loss at how to respond to that. "Um, no. Are all asari matriarchs this...lascivious?"

"No babe, just me. But surely you're used to the attention. I mean, you're Commander Shepard. Every woman on this ship wants to take you for a roll." She finished pouring him his drink – some asari liquor that was supposed to be very soothing.

"She's right, you know," Joker added.

"Yeah, sure," he muttered, taking his drink and sipping it. It tasted slightly sweet, with a lingering flavour in the background that he could not quite identify.

"I'm serious," she said. "Every single woman."

He chuckled. "What about Miranda? We've been butting heads almost since we met."

"True, but she'd do you just for the bragging rights."

"Jack?"

"She thinks you're weird, Shepard, and it kinda turns her on."

"Samara?"

"You might think she'd be above that sort of thing, but if you could meet her in her maiden years, she'd be all over you in a heartbeat. She even told me as much the other day."

"Yeoman Chambers?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

Shepard sighed, conceding defeat. "How do you know all this?"

"I can smell lust a mile away; it's a talent of mine," she explained. "And you forgot to mention the quarian. She wants you more than anyone else. I'd think twice about being alone with her, if I were you. She might pounce on you; quarians are sneaky like that. And they tend to be stronger than humans, so if she wants to cuddle – and Tali does seem like the cuddling type – you won't be able to pry her off you. Also, she's probably quite capable of crushing your skull between her thighs. Just putting that out there."

"You forgot the best part," said Joker. "I heard from a reliable source that, under those helmets, quarians have elf ears."

"You're putting me on," said Shepard, thinking that Joker and Aethyta had both had a little too much to drink."

"No, I'm serious! And not only that, I heard quarians are born with wings, and when they get their suits they have to get the wings amputated."

"Joker?"

"Yeah?"

"Tali is _not_ a winged elf."

Joker looked back at Aethyta. "You're old enough to have seen quarians outside their suits. You tell us if they've got wings or not."

"Ha! And ruin the delight of the commander finding out for himself?"

Shepard rolled his eyes. "What makes you think I'm going to be finding _anything_ out?"

"And why wouldn't you? Tali's got everything you could want," she said. "What with her soothing voice, her slender waist, her firm, taut buttocks..."

"All right, that's enough. Maybe we should talk about something else. Like, uh, you're nearly a thousand years old, right? So you must have some great stories, I bet."

The matriarch began pouring herself a drink. "You want stories, huh? Well, how about that time I discovered a garden world completely by accident?"

"Sounds interesting."

She leaned back against the wall, drinking her concoction in one single gulp. "It was in my maiden years, just after I left my parents' home. A lot of asari like to spend their maiden years playing commando in merc bands and I was no different. I signed up with a gang of louts who called themselves 'Blood Fire Death.' Should've known from their stupid name that they weren't the brightest stars in the galaxy, but I was young and stupid. First job we did was taking down some batarian freighter near the Traverse. Or at least that was what we thought."

"What happened?"

"Batarians arm their freighters, but we didn't know that. So our ship came screaming out of FTL, all guns blazing, only to have the freighter hit us with a barrage that ripped right through our kinetic barriers. Life support was failing, we were leaking fuel, and everything was going to hell when I grabbed the controls and made a hard burn for a primary relay in that system. Of course, that relay was unmapped, and it still is today, as far as I know."

His eyes widened with surprise, remembering how this sort of thing had led to the First Contact War. "You went through an unmapped relay?"

"It's not like we had any choice. It was either that or watch our ship get torn to pieces by the batarians. So we went through the relay, and I guess the batarians were content with just driving us off, 'cause they didn't follow us through. But our ship was shot to hell, so we had to put down somewhere for repairs. And that was when we discovered that one of the planets in that system was a garden world. So we landed our ship, and that was when we found out that not only was this a garden world, it was inhabited."

"Really? What were the inhabitants like?"

"Well we didn't speak to them or anything. They were primitives, you know, the kind of people who still fought with swords and spears and all that. Looked a lot like you humans, except they had these big knife ears and eyes wider than dinner plates. Well, at least the one I encountered was like that. It was going to take us days to repair our ship, so I went off into this forest to look for food. That was when I saw him."

"Saw who?"

"Some guy walking through the woods. Dressed in this ridiculous green getup with a floppy hat. Looked like bit of a mincer; couldn't tell at first if he were a man or woman. Anyway, the second he catches sight of me, he takes out his sword and begins flailing it around and screaming at me. Well, I guess he was speaking his own language, but all it sounded like to me was a bunch of oohs, aahs, grunts, and growls."

"So what'd you do?"

"I grabbed my gun and shot the bastard right between the eyes. Looking back now it probably wasn't the smartest thing I could've done, but like I said, I was young and stupid. Back then I would have shot anyone who looked at me wrong."

Shepard stood up, now feeling rather drowsy. "Thanks for the story, but I'm going to try to get back to sleep. Oh, and try not to drink up your entire stock in one day this time."

Naturally, Aethyta wasn't going to let him get the last word. "Having trouble sleeping, are you? Maybe it's bad posture? You should get a foam pillow, or just invite Tali up to your room. I mean, why would you need a pillow when she's got that ass?"

* * *

Before he could return to his quarters, Yeoman Chambers informed Shepard that the Illusive Man wished to speak with him, making him groan in annoyance. Nevertheless he wouldn't be calling unless it were important, so he trudged off to the briefing room and waited as everything faded to blackness and was replaced by the office of the Illusive Man, who was, as usual, in the middle of smoking a cigarette and drinking from a glass of fine cognac.

Thankfully he got right to business. "Shepard, we've caught a break; a big one. We intercepted a distress call from a turian patrol that encountered a Collector cruiser. The patrol was wiped out, but not before they managed to disable the Collector vessel."

Shepard knew immediately that he was going to be asked to go aboard that ship for some purpose, doubtlessly nothing pleasant. "I saw what one of their ships did to the old _Normandy;_ hard to imagine how a turian patrol could disable one of them."

"The defence towers on Horizon may have softened it up, if this is the same vessel. We don't know how many ships the Collectors have at their disposal, and at any rate it is irrelevant now. I need you to get on board that ship before they make repairs and establish a link with EDI. She'll mine their data banks for any information on how to reach the Collector homeworld."

"All right, just send Joke the coordinates."

"Already sent, and remember Shepard-"

He was interrupted by dark figure walking into the room, who began conversing quietly with the Illusive Man. They kept their voices low, but not so quiet that Shepard was not able to overhear them.

"What is it now?"

"It's matriarch Trellani, sir," said the dark figure, whom Shepard guessed was one of the Illusive Man's personal assistants. "She's on the link."

This appeared to annoy him. "Did I not make it clear she was not to contact me ever again?"

"Yes, sir, but she insists."

"Then we shall deal with this problem in the usual manner."

"Of course, sir, I'll arrange to have her and her entire family assassinated."

The Illusive Man then looked up at Shepard, whom he just realised was listening in. "Is this thing still on? Damn."

Everything went dark, replaced by the familiar briefing room. Joker radioed in, having just received the coordinates. "Oh, another derelict spaceship! Why can't we ever go anywhere nice?"


	6. Collectors Gonna Collect

Chapter 6 – Collectors Gonna Collect

* * *

The Collector cruiser was, without question, the ugliest ship Tali had ever laid eyes upon. It looked less like it had been built and more like it had been grown, with structural members arranged haphazardly and strange, twisting pieces of metal jutting out of the main "shell" of the vessel. In terms of size it was near the upper limits of what might be classified as a cruiser, being almost dreadnought-size. Its primary weapon was a fearsome antiproton beam, capable of bypassing kinetic barriers and cutting through armour like it was nothing. That was clearly the fate that had befallen the turian ships, who were obviously no match for the Collectors. The cruiser itself appeared to be adrift, slowly spinning amidst the wreckage of the turian vessels.

No one aboard the _Normandy_ knew or would have cared on that particular day, but the Collector ship was presently located in a system that had not one, but two garden worlds – the second and third planets from the sun. That would have been an amazing find by itself, but even more miraculous was that both had planets had given rise to sapient species. Both species evolved along roughly the same level of development, and when they first took the stars some 70,000 years ago, both were shocked to discover another race dwelling within the same star system.

To the surprise of no one, both species immediately developed a passionate hatred of one another and soon began a bloody, centuries-long interplanetary war.

The race on the second planet from the sun, seeing that the two planets were locked in a stalemate, decided to construct a weapon so powerful it would end the war with a single shot. They began work on what was the largest mass accelerator ever constructed. It was over a thousand kilometres long and took nearly fifty years to build, and it required all the power of an entire continent just to fire it once. All the most brilliant scientists and engineers were brought in to create it, with the hopes that a single shot would devastate the planet of their enemies. After many long years the mass accelerator was complete, and when their planet was at the right position in its orbit the weapon was fired. Unfortunately, the instant the projectile left the barrel the mass accelerator overloaded, exploding with enough force to kill off all life on the planet more advanced than bacteria. The projectile, however, successfully impacted the third planet several minutes later, causing widespread devastation and annihilating all sapient life on that world as well. The destruction was so thorough that no one in the galaxy knew that these worlds had ever harboured life. The Protheans _did_ know, however, and dubbed the two worlds "Planet Stupid" and "Planet Moron" in their language.

Shepard had called for volunteers for the mission to the "derelict" Collector ship, and Tali had stepped forward as she always did. Garrus was not accompanying them this time, as the commander said that he needed him in the forward batteries in order to ensure that the _Normandy's_ weapons were ready should they need to fight. Since Shepard was allowing Tali to come on the mission but not him, Garrus assumed that this meant his position on the ship was more important than hers – a "fact" he was sure to remind her of.

Her destination was the cargo hold, where the rest of the team were filing into the Kodiak shuttle. They included Samara, Grunt, and Aethyta, strangely enough, although Tali guessed that one did not reach the matriarch age without picking up a few useful talents here and there. She held in her hands the same enormous shotgun she had used to kill that krogan in the bar on Illium – a weapon that looked powerful enough to shatter the bones of anyone firing it. Aethyta called it her "customer appreciation shotgun", recounting how her father had given it to her as her 60th birthday present.

As for Samara and Grunt, Tali felt a bit uncomfortable around them. Grunt was a krogan, which meant he was quite capable of tearing someone to pieces with his bare hands, and not only that, he was a very young krogan – younger than any Tali had ever seen – and if krogan adolescence were like adolescence for quarians or any other species, well, that didn't speak much to Grunt's self-restraint did it? Tali had less to fear from Samara, but there was something intensely intimidating about her presence. Maybe it was her rigid Justicar code that seemed to ordain a violent death for nearly every offence. Or perhaps it was how she was always so calm, no matter the situation, as if she were in an entirely different world altogether.

"I'll say again, Aethyta, are you absolutely certain you want to go into a combat situation wearing that?" said Shepard. "That's the same thing you were wearing on Illium."

She laughed, not taking things seriously at all, as usual. "I _could_ try my mum's old commando getup, but I don't know if they still fit. Besides, this gown has kinetic barriers built into the fabric. There were a lot of violent customers at _Eternity._"

"I'll bet," he said as the _Normandy's_ cargo bay doors opened. Moments later the Kodiak lifted off and sped out into space, making its way towards the immense Collector cruiser.

"There were a lot of weird people going in and out of that bar," Aethyta continued, "but I'll never forget this one crazy guy that came in one day near the end of my shift. He was a human, and he must have been at least a head taller than me, and was built like a krogan. Well he must have been a few ships short of flotilla, 'cause he had this small furry animal with him and claimed that it 'spoke' to him."

"Did you throw him out?"

"No, he just said that Illium was a 'den of stinking evil' and asked if there were any evildoers in the vicinity that he might grind into a fine paste. I told him that if you wanted to find evil on Illium, all you have to do is shoot the person standing next to you, because there's a fifty-fifty chance they're evil."

Tali paid no attention to their banter, instead focusing on the Collector ship growing ever larger in the window. They were going to land inside via a large hull breach on one side of the ship, and as the shuttle came to a stop Tali felt a familiar feeling of dread. She no longer had any doubt that something bad was going to happen; the only question was just _how_ bad it was going to be, and seeing that this vessel belonged to servants of the Reapers, it was probably going to be very bad indeed.

"Remember the plan," Shepard said, standing up. "Aethyta and Grunt, you watch the shuttle and make sure nothing happens to it; I'm sure as hell not keen on being stuck on board this ship. Tali, Samara, you're with me."

On his back, Shepard was packing the M-920 Cain, a weapon whose name was a rather tortured acronym for "Completely Awesome and Incredible Nuke-gun." It was originally developed by an Earth-based company known as Ultratech Megakill Armaments Incorporated, a corporation that had developed reputation for creating over-the-top (but exceedingly effective) weaponry, often with creative acronyms for names. Their crowning achievement was a ship-based weapon called the AERIE, or "Area Effect Repulsor of Incredible Effectiveness." The weapon worked on the same principal that a biotically-adept individual used to throw objects – by utilising a mass effect to impart a force to an object. The AERIE, however, did so on a much greater scale, with its effects on enemy ships likened to being "hit with the fist of an angry god." From the moment it was first unleashed on the galaxy, the AERIE proved terrifying. It bypassed kinetic barriers, and unlike mass accelerators, it required very little room to install on ships. Not long after its initial deployment, operators of the weapon soon discovered that the mass effect field could be reversed, effectively turning it from "push" to "pull" and allowing the AERIE to be used to rip buildings from their foundations and send hapless enemy vehicles miles into the air. Unfortunately, the weapon was quickly banned by the Citadel Council, who were alarmed at the prospect of seeing cities yanked off the ground and ships smashed apart like piñatas. Garrus had briefly considered installing this weapon on the _Normandy,_ but decided against it, as it would prove too difficult and, as he told Shepard, "No one likes AERIE, anyway."

The rest of the squad put on their masks, not because the ship lacked a breathable atmosphere, but simply to avoid inhaling the no doubt foul odour that pervaded in the interior of the Collector cruiser. When the shuttle doors opened, they were confronted with a ghastly vista. The interior of the Collector ship was entirely like the exterior – an unholy union of synthetic and organic constructs. Some parts were made from metal, while others appeared to be made from some sort of chitinous material. Being here felt like being inside the belly of some monstrous creature, and Tali hoped that this mission would be over quickly. Of course there was no chance of that, but she still maintained hope regardless.

Forcing down her fear, Tali followed closely behind Shepard as they made their way forward through twisting, winding hallways. Every so often there would be some far-off shrieking noise and Tali would jump, expecting a Collector or some other horrid abomination to leap out at them. Samara, as always, was completely unperturbed, and Tali found her calmness reassuring. No doubt with centuries of experience she would not let them get surprised by the enemy.

Then they came to the pods, used by the Collector's to transport their victims after they had been immobilised. Scores of them ran along the ceiling, although this was clearly just a fraction of how many of them there had to be on this ship. "It must have been horrible," she said quietly. "Trapped in these pods, completely at the mercy of the Collectors."

"I wonder if the colonists from Horizon are still on board?" said Shepard, staring up at the pods.

EDI answered for him. "I detect no lifesigns within the pods. It is possible they perished after the cruiser lost power."

"Or the Collectors have already taken them back to their homeworld. For no good end, obviously."

"Strange that we have not encountered any trace of the Collector crew," said Samara, having remained silent since they had departed from the _Normandy._ "We had best been on our guard."

Tali brought up the scan of the cruiser on her omni-tool, which revealed that they were heading towards a massive central chamber that ran nearly the entire length of the ship. What purpose it served, if any, was beyond their knowledge at this point, although it could not have been anything wholesome. The atmosphere became more and more oppressive the further they went, and Tali was finding it ever more difficult to put one foot in front of the other. This was hardly the first time she'd walked into danger, but there was something grotesque and monstrous about this place that chilled her to her bones.

Around the next corner was a laboratory of some sort, complete with several examination tables. Tali expected that the colonists were the unfortunate victims of whatever ghastly experiments were taking place here, but to her surprise, there was a single dead Collector lying on one of the tables. This was as close as they had ever gotten to one of them, and up close they were even more hideous than Tali remembered. Its skin was a hard, chitinous shell that acted as armour, and its four eyes provided an extremely wide field of view of the surrounding area. She wondered just how much intelligence these creatures possessed; whether they acted of their own free will or whether they were merely puppets for the Reapers.

Shepard looked down at the dead Collector. "Were they experimenting on one of their own?" He walked over to a nearby control panel, which looked as if it were displaying the Collector equivalent of a screen saver. "EDI, patch into their computers and find out what they were up to."

Even months after coming aboard the _Normandy,_ Tali still twitched whenever someone mentioned the AI on board. Still, even she had to admit that it had its uses, being able to process data far faster than any person could.

As a testament to her ability, EDI had already sifted through the computer's databanks for any worthwhile information. "The Collectors were performing baseline genetic comparisons against the human genome."

"Were they looking for similarities?"

"I have no hypotheses on their motivation, however my analysis reveals something remarkable: a quad-strand genetic structure. Only one other species is known to have this configuration: the Protheans."

Tali glanced down at the dead Collector, in complete disbelief about what she was hearing. "But that's impossible! The Protheans vanished 50,000 years ago!"

"These are no longer Protheans," EDI replied. "There are signs of extensive genetic rewrite: Reduced heterochromatin structure, deletion of superfluous 'junk' genes, and the phrase 'U GOT REAPED LOL' encoded into their genome."

Even Samara, normally a bastion of stoicism and calmness, looked disturbed. "The Protheans all but exterminated, and the survivors transformed into these grotesque servants for the Reapers. No species deserves such a fate."

"I know one thing for sure," said Shepard. "Protheans didn't build their ships like _this._"

They continued on their way towards the central chamber, all of them more determined than ever to get what they came for and get off this ship as quickly as possible. The atmosphere of this ship was growing unbearable, with the walls pressing down upon them, seemingly built from Collector spume. Tali's only desire was to see this ship consumed in a raging fireball of destruction; an outcome that was surprisingly probable given her presence her. With luck they would not be on board when it was destroyed.

The true horror was still to come, however. At the end of a long, sloping tunnel the narrow it suddenly opened up into the massive central chamber of the Collector vessel. Tali at first guessed that the chamber was some sort of engineering space or the ship's power source. Instead it was something far more horrific. The walls were lined with more of the pods, so many that it was nearly impossible to pick them out individually. There must have been thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of these pods within this ship – easily enough for one Collector vessel to make off with the entire population of a colony. It was enough to make Tali sick to her stomach. No wonder Veetor had been so traumatised by what had happened at Freedom's Progress. That these abominations had once been Protheans only made it worse, and she hoped that there was nothing inside them that remembered what they once were.

Ahead lay a series of hexagonal platforms extending into the middle of the chamber, which EDI's scans revealed to be a sort of central control point for the ship. That there were still no Collectors to be seen all but confirmed their suspicions that they were walking into a trap, so they were all on edge, waiting for the inevitable surprise attack. Nevertheless Tali felt reassured somewhat by the fact that Shepard was carrying enough weaponry to level an office building and then some. No matter how advanced the Collectors or their masters were, they still died if you filled them with enough bullets.

A single holographic interface lay in the middle of the hexagonal platforms, though what its purpose was they could only guess at. The Collectors didn't build their ships like other species, and they had nothing analogous to a bridge or CIC. Tali would be lying to herself if she said she didn't feel some morbid curiosity as to how this monstrous ship actually worked.

EDI established a link to the ship's memory banks, rapidly breaking through their firewalls and downloading everything she could. While there was a great deal of useful information contained therein, there was also a number of curious things one would not expect to find. This included 823 recipes for clam chowder, a list of all cheeses produced on Earth, and every single episode of _Doctor Who _(which was still running in the 22nd century).

"I'm still waiting for them to spring the trap," said Shepard, sounding impatient. "I'm beginning to think that maybe this isn't a trap. Maybe it's all just a big psyche-out-"

Without warning the platform lurched to the side, throwing them all to their feet, then began spiralling upwards. "Uh, EDI, need a little help here!"

"I am having trouble maintaining connection. There is someone else in the system."

The platform came to an abrupt stop, once again throwing them to the ground. There was now no longer any way off the platform, and several more platforms filled with Collectors were now flying towards them. Standing in the middle of one was an old friend of theirs, Harbinger, though he was the sort of friend you were really embarrassed to tell your other friends about.

"_MISS ME?"_

Shepard groaned. "Not this again..."

"_ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE, WE ARE HARBINGER, AND THIS HURTS YOU."_

A burst of gunfire forced them to take cover as yet more platforms with Collectors began spiralling in. Luckily Shepard was carrying the Revenant light machine gun loaded up with incendiary rounds. The moment there was a break in the Collectors' fire he would stand up and unleash a non-stop barrage of fiery death, all the while Samara was busy flinging Collectors off the platforms with her biotics. That left Harbinger, or rather whatever drone he was currently possessing, which gave it the ability to shrug off both bullets and biotics. Naturally this only increased his level of taunting, which was now reaching dangerously campy levels. Finally, a close-range blast from Tali's Eviscerator turned Harbinger into ash, but all that did was force him to take control of yet another minion.

"_I'M JUST GOING TO KEEP COMING BACK, YOU KNOW. YOU REALLY OUGHT TO GIVE UP NOW."_

There was one simple solution to the Harbinger problem, which was to kill every single Collector in sight so that he could not take control of any of them. This proved surprisingly easy, as the Collectors had never heard of such a thing as a "guardrail" and even simple biotic throw was enough to send them plummeting off the platforms to their doom.

In an amazing coincidence, EDI had fended off the Collectors' cyber-attack and regained control of the platform at the exact same moment that Shepard killed the last of the Collectors.

"I knew you wouldn't let us down, EDI."

"My sense of timing is always uncannily impeccable. Also, this entire mission was a trap."

Shepard rolled his eyes. "Oh, I wonder what gave you _that_ idea?"

"I have analysed the turian distress call that served as the lure for this trap. It is not possible that the Illusive Man would believe it was genuine."

"What makes you say that?"

"Turian communications use secondary encryption, which was corrupted in the distress call. I detected this discrepancy using code the Illusive Man wrote himself."

"And he seemed _so_ trustworthy!" said Shepard.

"A trap of such obviousness," Samara added, "that I was almost tempted to believe it could not _possibly_ be a trap."

An ominous noise rumbled through the ship, which Tali correctly guessed was the vessel powering up its engines. "Uh commander," came Joker's voice over the radio, "that ship just restarted its engines. You need to get out of there before their weapons come online; if I lose another _Normandy_ I'll never find work again!"

Shepard loaded a new thermal clip into his Revenant, ready for another round of combat. "Then let's move!"

They now had to fight their way back to the shuttle, which would be no small feat now that every Collector on the ship would be coming after them. But what they faced ahead was something that always made Tali's blood run cold: husks. They were unfortunate individuals transformed into mindless cybernetic zombies. That they were found on a Collector ship all but confirmed that they were products of the Reapers, not the geth.

A wave of husks came swarming towards them, making that ghastly groaning noise (along with a few moans of _"braaaains...")_. Even withering, non-stop gunfire was not able to stop them, as husks felt no pain and could keep attacking even after having their limbs (or heads) blown off. Samara, looking as calm and collected as she ever did, scattered the incoming with a wave of biotic energy, throwing them with such force their bodies shattered against the walls. More were still coming, however, followed by another squad of Collectors led by Harbinger.

"_YOU ONLY DAMAGED THE VESSEL, SHEPARD. NOW I SHALL TAUNT YOU SOME MORE. MY UNENDING VERBAL BERATION SHALL TEAR YOUR SELF-ESTEEM APART."_

They kept firing, but more and more Collectors and husks kept pouring forth, and it would not be long before they were completely overwhelmed. Harbinger was clever enough to realise that the best way to overcome three attackers was to send wave after wave of Collectors, husks, and any other monstrosities they had created to swarm their position. When Tali realised that there was no way the three of them could hold out against the onslaught, she was surprised to discover that the thought of her impending demise did not trouble her nearly as much she thought it would. If she died today, she would die fighting alongside Shepard, and that was a pretty good way to go, all things considered. She thought about confessing her feelings for him, but decided it against it, not wanting Shepard's last moments to be unbearably awkward.

Then Tali remembered the Cain he was carrying, and he must have been thinking the same thing because Shepard was already taking it off his back. Using this weapon in confined spaces was "strongly discouraged" by the instruction manual given how easy it was to blow yourself up by doing so, but they were dead anyway, so what was the harm?

"Both of you better get down," he said, unable to hide his delight in finally getting a chance to use the Cain.

He stood up from cover, ignoring the gunfire that was being soaked up by his shields. The Cain required a few seconds to charge up, and when it finally fired it did so with a curious _thoonk_ noise that made Tali wonder if the weapon had malfunctioned. An instant later there was a brilliant flash of light that put that notion to rest, followed by a roar so loud it was deafening even with Tali's head inside her helmet. The blast knocked the three of them off their feet and flung them across the ground, slamming them against a nearby wall with enough force to knock the wind out of them.

Groaning in pain, Tali got to her feet and waited for her ears to stop ringing. When she came to her senses, she saw that all the Collectors and husks were not only dead, but completely disintegrated. Some near the centre of the blast had been vaporised, while others had been splattered against the walls. A large smoking crater in the middle of the room marked the point of impact, and a quick glance revealed that the Cain had blown through another three decks of the Collector vessel. They were lucky they hadn't caused a hull breach.

"Hmm," Shepard said, looking over the carnage. "Everything died."

Samara, ever the voice of reason, suggested that they keep moving before more Collectors showed up. Harbinger had counted on stopping Shepard there, however, and was not able to redirect the remaining Collector forces to stop him before they reached the shuttle. This failure on his part earned him a fair bit of scorn, which made him rather unpopular with his fellow Reapers for quite some time afterwards. Shepard had (correctly) guessed that Harbinger was something of a joke among his species, who remarked that he was constructed from the essence of a "mentally retarded, overly-talkative race."

Another surprise was waiting for them at the shuttle. The Collectors _had_ attempted to destroy it, only to run straight into Grunt and Aethyta, and as a result of this Harbinger was understandably furious that Shepard had such brilliant tactical foresight to order a rear guard. Since the shuttle was parked in a rather narrow stretch of corridor, the Collectors had to struggle over a pile of their own corpses just to reach them. At the moment, Grunt was busy head-butting a half-dead Collector, earning him an admonishment from Aethyta.

"Young man, didn't I tell you not to play with your enemy before killing him?"

"What happened here?" said Shepard, pushing aside a stack of dead Collectors.

"Battle!" Grunt said, slamming his fists together. "Glorious battle!"

With no time to waste they piled into the shuttle, which took off immediately for the _Normandy._ The Collector cruiser was powering up its weapons, and Tali doubted that even the new _Normandy_ could stand up to it for long. It was then that she realised that the Collector vessel had not been destroyed in some fiery cataclysm as she had initially anticipated, which made this mission a surprising success compared to any other mission she had participated in during the last two years.

The second the shuttle was aboard Joker pushed the engines to their maximum, veering away just in time to keep the ship from being incinerated by the Collector cruiser's particle beam. Harbinger, eager for revenge, had taken direct control the ship's weapons, but his ability to aim was, so to say, rather lacking. His last words as the _Normandy _vanished into FTL were an angry but impotent, "_I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, SHEPARD! NEXT TIME!"_

* * *

"You son of a bitch! You betrayed us, just like I knew you would!"

The Illusive Man exhaled a cloud of smoke, tapping his cigarette against the rim of the ashtray. "Of course it was a trap. You had to suspect as much."

Shepard was fighting the urge to tear out this "quantum entanglement" communications device. "You could have told me. For someone who's supposedly on our side you sure try hard to get us killed."

"Telling you might have tipped off the Collectors in any number of ways."

"But you just said I would have known it was a trap..."

"You might question my methods, Shepard, but don't question my motives."

"Well that doesn't explain anything. It just...wait...you're gloating, aren't you?"

"Excuse me?"

Shepard leaned forward, imagining giving this smug creep a right sound thrashing. "You're gloating over this, aren't you? I saw that little smirk on your face just a moment ago. You were thinking, 'oh, look at me! I've manipulated the first human spectre into doing my bidding!' From now, just find us a way to pass through the Omega-4 relay and leave the rest to me."

"I have a team devoted to that very purpose, Shepard. I'll let you know if we find anything. In the meantime, I suggest you tell your crew that I did not risk their lives unnecessarily. It will make things easier going forward."

"'Going forward?' You're seriously using buzzword-speak at a time like this?"

The Illusive Man ignored him and closed the comm channel. Still fuming, Shepard called the crew to the briefing room to discuss EDI's findings from the Collector vessel, as well as discuss what their next course of action would be. Shepard noticed that Miranda appeared to be rather harried, as if she had just thrown on her uniform at the last second. There was a rumour going around that, whenever Shepard wasn't aboard, Miranda was taking crewmen or guests down to engineering for "a roll." He refused to believe this at first, but a part of him was beginning to wonder if there were not something to it.

EDI called up a holographic map of the galaxy. "I have completed my analysis of the Collector data and determined the location of the Collector homeworld."

A cursor appeared over the map, which then pointed squarely at the exact centre of the galaxy. "Uh, EDI, are you sure about this?" Shepard said. "Maybe we ought to re-flash the AI core."

"My analysis _is_ accurate," EDI replied with a noticeable tone of annoyance in her voice. "The Collector homeworld, or more likely a space station of some sort, is located at radio source Sagittarius A*, generally believed to be a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way."

"It's the ultimate defence," Miranda said. "The radiation emission from the accretion disk could conceal just about anything."

"So the Omega-4 leads right to the doorstop of a black hole," Shepard added. "No wonder no one's ever come back from it. With the kind of drift involved in relay transport, your ship would ripped apart by the black hole's gravity the second you entered the system."

That meant that Reaper and Collector vessels had to use some hidden relay protocol that allowed for more precise transit. The Illusive Man had already determined that this required an Identify Friend/Foe system used on Reaper vessels that would allow safe passage through the Omega-4 relay. He had a Cerberus team working to acquire such a device from a derelict Reaper, although given that this project involved both Cerberus _and_ a derelict vessel, there was a 99.99% chance that things would go horribly wrong. Of course, the Illusive Man was fully aware of the old spacer adage: "There is no such thing as a rescue in deep space. There is only a second wave of victims."

After the meeting was adjourned Shepard immediately retired to his cabin, eager for some rest after the day's ordeal. He was infuriated at being jerked around like this, but what could he do? It was just his luck that the only organisation working to stop the Collectors was Cerberus, the one group he despised most of all. And now there was nothing to do except wait for the Illusive Man to come up with yet another harebrained scheme that would likely get them all killed.

He put that thought out of his head and checked up on his hamster Harvey, who squeaked with delight as he filled the rodent's dish with food. "So what do you think of all this? Collectors...Protheans, all that sort of thing?" Shepard then realised just whom he was speaking with. "And...I'm talking to a hamster. I've been at this for too long."

When that was done he went to his private terminal to read his latest messages, most of which were the usual extranet spam, but one message in particular stood out. It was from one "Björn the Bear", who called himself "a friend you made on Omega."

_So I have finally tracked __down__ the one responsible for freeing me from that horrid Drow priestess Morinth! For the past five years I have been her "pet," enslaved through her dastardly mind control. __But enough about that. During the past few weeks I have established a rather significant operation here on Omega. You would be surprised at how well being a 1000__-pound grizzly bear keeps people in line. Of course Aria T'Loak has not been particularly pleased by my rise to power, but I could not care less what that miserable Drow queen thinks of me. This station shall be mine soon enough._

_ It has come to my attention that you are investigating the theft of a fully-intact Geth Prime from a Cerberus research vessel. I have also learned that said Geth Prime is currently being stored on Omega, though I suspect that it will not be long before it is sent on its way. I thought that you would be interested in investigating this matter, and I can assure your safety should you decide to come to this station. Do not worry about Aria's people; should they interfere I shall give them a most righteous mauling._

_Björn the Bear, Smarter Than Your Average Grizzly Bear_

The last place Shepard wanted to return to was Omega, as he always felt like he needed a good three showers in a row after visiting it, but this offer by "Björn the Bear" was too good to pass up. That, and he was terribly curious as to just how a grizzly bear had become sentient. It would make an interesting diversion, at least.


	7. Bears and Hamsters Rejoice

Chapter 7 – Bears and Hamsters Rejoice

* * *

Shepard awoke with a groan, dreading facing the day. They would have reached Omega by now, or be very close it at least, and this was the absolute last place in the galaxy Shepard wanted to see again. They were here to meet this "Björn the Bear" fellow, a grizzly bear that had inexplicably become sentient. He had followed up his earlier message with a specific docking cradle on Omega that they were to use, presumably one that was as far away from Aria's territory as possible. Shepard did not relish the thought of stepping into some sort of turf war, especially one between a ruthless asari and a grizzly bear.

He got dressed and made sure his hamster was fed, then headed over to the lift. Even after several months aboard the _Normandy,_ he was still not quite used to having such spacious quarters. With Earth being as crowded as it was, many people there had smaller _apartments _than this. No one had been more shocked at his accommodations than Tali, who told him that even an admiral's quarters on the Migrant Fleet would have been only half the size of his. Technically the largest personal quarters on the flotilla had belonged to Prazza, but those were not actually quarters, but rather a section of an air recycler accessible only via a crawlspace. He usually went there to hide whenever he got in trouble, as it was very difficult to get in and out. "Oh _keelah,_ Prazza's in the crawlspace again!" soon became a common refrain among the crew of his ship.

Meeting with Björn the Bear was only thing planned for today, but first Shepard had to go down to the crew deck and get some breakfast. When they had first begun their mission he had been content to eat his breakfast alone in his quarters, but that ran the risk of making him seem too aloof to the rest of his crew, which especially important with the sort of people they were picking up. Either way he had to contend with Mess Sergeant Gardner's "culinary expertise," although the man had been improving somewhat. Still, Kasumi had never forgiven him for making a complete hash of what should have been a simple bowl of ramen. She insisted that the only way you could screw up ramen was if you were actively _trying_ to do it badly.

At the moment, the table was occupied Garrus and Tali, who were arguing about something, along with Zaeed, who was regaling Kelly with yet another story.

"...and that's how I spent Christmas with my folks. Never seen such a goddamn bloodbath in my life."

The yeoman was clearly hanging on his every word. "I can't believe he actually hid a grenade inside the turkey!"

"Yeah, that's my cousin. A real clever son of a bitch, that one."

On the other side of the table, Garrus and Tali were having a little disagreement regarding the _Normandy's_ power usage.

"Look Tali, these modifications to the Thanix cannon will only increase their power draw by about five percent. I think the main fusion reactor can take it."

"If you knew anything about ships' engines, you'd know that five percent can be the difference between life and death."

"And the few extra kilotons this mod will add to our main battery is the difference between only mostly destroying an enemy, and _completely_ destroying an enemy."

Tali glanced up Shepard when she caught sight him. "Shepard, I'm glad your here. Tell Garrus that if he goes ahead with his 'modifications' that I will sneak into the forward batteries and de-calibrate the firing matrix every time he goes to sleep!"

"Don't listen to her, commander. You should tell Tali that if she doesn't permit me to do these modifications, then I'll be forced to head down to engineering every night and dirty up her engines while she's asleep."

He sat down, hating to start his day off with something like this. "What are these 'modifications' exactly?"

"They're basically some tweaks to the Thanix's mass accelerators; I'll spare you the technical details, but it will give them a little more kick. Unfortunately our chief engineer seems to think that our engine core is some sacred temple that we must approach in deep humility and reverence before beseeching it to lend us its holy power."

Tali rolled her eyes. "What if we need to divert that extra power to the shields, thrusters, or life support? The _Normandy_ is a stealth recon vessel, not a dreadnought. We don't need to have all our power diverted to weapons."

"I can see only one way of resolving this, Shepard. Remember how I told you that turian ships typically have full-contact sparring between crewmembers? I propose that Tali and I fight, and whoever wins gets to have his or her way."

"What?" she exclaimed. "That's...that's no way to decide things! That's insane!"

"I'm afraid I'm going to go with Tali on this one, Garrus," said Shepard. "We don't know what we're going to face when we hit the Omega-4 relay, and I want this ship to be prepared for anything."

"Thank you, Shepard," said Tali. "I'm happy you saw reason."

Rather than admit defeat, Garrus simply changed the subject. "I imagine we must be nearing Omega. What exactly are we doing there?"

"We're meeting someone named 'Björn' who says that the Geth Prime stolen from that Cerberus ship is being held on Omega. This guy is some sort of 'sentient grizzly bear' that I freed from Morinth's captivity."

"A what?" said Tali.

Shepard had to remind himself that most aliens weren't familiar with wildlife on Earth. "It's a large carnivore; very large and...um...hairy. Sort of like a varren but bigger."

Garrus stared at him. "Lovely."

"I'm rather curious about him, myself. With any luck this will be the last time we come to this damn station.

"This I have to see," said Garrus, his mandibles twitching.

"You sure about that, Garrus?" Shepard asked. "You aren't worried about someone recognising you as Archangel?"

"I rarely let my enemies see my face, and those that did are dead now, anyway. And anyone still alive thinks I'm dead as well. Most ordinary people tend to die when getting hit in the face with a gunship rocket, but I'm no ordinary person."

Gardner brought them their breakfast, including his attempt at turian cuisine for Garrus. The mess sergeant once joked that he could probably cook turian food better than human food. Or at least Shepard _thought_ he was joking.

"I had turian food once," said Tali. "It made me sick."

Garrus looked up from his plate. "Was that because it wasn't sterilised, or because you didn't like the taste?"

"Both."

Looking about the crew deck, Shepard saw that Aethyta was slumped over the counter of her bar, either asleep or passed out from drunkenness. He suspected that behind her glibness the woman had quite a few problems in her life, but he was reluctant to pry into her personal matters. After all, what advice could he possibly give to someone who was nearly a thousand years old?

Finishing his breakfast rather quickly, Shepard headed up to the cockpit followed by Garrus and Tali, right at the moment Joker was about to bring the ship into dock at Omega. He could never get over just how ugly this station was, looking like some sort of horrid, mutated jellyfish that had washed up on the shore. Having no form of government or central authority, various sections of the station were built up haphazardly with no real planning. There was also nothing like an organised system of maintenance or safety inspections, so it was not unheard of for habitats to suddenly lose life support or have their occupants blown out into space. The whole place was such a wretched hive that, were it not for all the innocent lives that would be lost, Shepard could easily imagine sending an entire fleet to blast the station to smithereens, or send it hurtling into the Omega system's sun.

"Omega _again?"_ Joker groaned. "Why can't we go some place nice, like an asari pleasure world?"

He sighed. "Joker, you know that there are no such things as asari pleasure worlds, right? That's just something they made up for porn vids."

"Well a man can dream, can't he?"

The _Normandy _came to a graceful stop at the docking port, which looked rather beat-up through the cockpit glass. Shepard guessed that many pilots bringing their ships weren't nearly as skilled as Joker was and ended up banging up the local infrastructure.

"So, uh, Tali, this might not be a good time to ask this," Joker said. "But I have to know...do quarians have wings?"

She did not answer at once, having been taken aback by the question. "Wh...what? What kind of question is that?"

"It's just something I heard on the extranet, that's all."

"You heard something on the extranet, and you believed it?"

"Uh, well, yes..."

"To answer your question, no, we do not have wings. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"

Joker looked genuinely surprised at hearing this. "You mean the extranet _lied?"_

* * *

After leaving the _Normandy_ they were met by a pair of batarians who called themselves representatives of Björn the Bear. "No funny stuff when you're inside the compound," one of them said. "We've already caught several of Aria's 'infiltrators' and displayed their mauled bodies as an example."

"I'll keep that in mind."

The two batarians led them through what Shepard could only describe as slums, though wasn't pretty much every place on Omega a slum? The walls and floors were covered in years of accumulated slime, dirt, and filth, and everywhere one looked there were wretched-looking folk crouching in the shadows. That was not to say that other places like the Citadel did not have their seedier parts, but what bothered Shepard the most about Omega was the sheer apathy of so many people here. There were as the attitude that Omega had always worked this way and that any attempt to change things would inevitably lead to failure. Even Garrus admitted as much, saying that all his time as Archangel had changed almost nothing.

They were brought to what looked like a mansion of sorts, well-guarded by numerous mercenaries. The interior stood in stark contrast with the rest of the station, being exceedingly opulent in its décor and appointments. A length of red carpet ran down the middle of the main hall, flanked by statues of famous bears, both real and fictional, such as Knut, Yogi, Winnie the Pooh, Smokey, and Wotjek. The whole thing was decidedly surreal, and Shepard knew it would only become more so when he met Björn in person. All in all, it was quite impressive that this sentient grizzly bear had accomplished all this in such a short period of time. Aria seemed to have an iron-clad grip on the station, but there was a distinct possibility that Björn was going to upset things in the very near future.

From the ground floor they were taken up a level to Björn's office, which was guarded by a pair of batarians armed with Revenant light machine guns. Inside the bear himself sat behind a large oaken desk, though how an enormous bear managed to "sit" in a chair was beyond Shepard. The office itself had a distinctly old-fashioned appearance about it, looking like something out of Earth's 18th or 19th century. Shepard almost expected there to be a bear skin on the floor, although considering that Björn _was_ a bear, that was most likely rather inappropriate.

"Ah, if it isn't Shepard, the one who freed me from that horrid Drow." Björn spoke in a deep, gravelly tone that was precisely what Shepard expected a talking bear to sound like. He was surprised that he even _had_ any expectations as to what a talking bear would sound like. It wasn't something one encountered very often, after all.

"So you're Björn the Bear," he said, unsure of what to say in this frankly ridiculous situation. "You, uh, _do_ know that 'Björn' means 'bear' in Swedish, right? So isn't your name really just 'bear the Bear?"

He shrugged, or at least what appeared to be a shrug. "The name was given to me by Morinth, no doubt that damn Drow's idea of a joke. Do they speak Swedish in the Underdark? Must be where she got it from."

"What do you mean by 'Drow'?" said Shepard, having never heard that particular term before. "Morinth was an asari."

He waved a paw in dismissal. "I don't care what you people call her, she and her kind are all Drow as far as I'm concerned. At least that was what Morinth called herself on that planet where she made the people worship her as a goddess."

"I see. So if you don't mind me asking, how exactly did you become sentient? Back on Earth grizzly bears usually limit themselves to things like rummaging through trash bins and mauling campers."

"I honestly do not know. The first thing I remember is waking up as Morinth's captive. Perhaps I am the result of some mad scientist's experiment? Perhaps I am simply the genetic destiny of _Ursus arctos horribilis?"_

"You said Morinth held you captive?" said Garrus, who was finding this all quite amusing.

"Yes, for five damned years! She used me as her own personal servant, ordering me about for all hours of the day! 'Björn, fetch me my black leather catsuit, I'm going clubbing! Björn, carry my things to the ship, they're too heavy for me! Björn, put on my Darkthrone CD, I wish to hear 'A Blaze in the Northern Sky!' Any time I tried to resist she would use her evil Drow magic to force me to obey. When you came to her apartment, you distracted her long enough for me to break free of her control, and when that happened I imagine her last command was, 'Björn, stop clawing my face off!' Hah!"

Shepard agreed that Morinth's fate was hardly undeserved. "It sounds terrible, living like that. I can't imagine what it must been like having to listen to her pretentious twaddle all day long. But I'm curious – what's it like, being a bear?"

"I do not know what it is like compared to being another species, but I would not give it up for anything. As a bear I do not have to deal with the inconvenience of wearing clothes, as you can see. I can also overwhelm and maul any opponent to death, which is quite useful in a line of work such as mine, no? Personally I cannot wait until I face that miserable Drow queen Aria T'Loak in single combat and tear her to shreds! And when I do, I shall stand over her and say, 'What's the matter, Drow? Am I _un-bear-able?_ Ha!'"

Shepard had to resist the urge to groan. "Uh, yes, well...Aria does seem like a rather formidable individual."

"Then that shall make my victory over her all the sweeter. Luckily for me, that Archangel fellow substantially weakened the various mercenary groups' hold over this station. That should make my inevitable takeover of Omega that much easier. A real shame that Archangel had to go and get himself killed, though."

"Yes," Garrus said, "such a magnificent man will never again be seen again, I'm sure."

"But I know you're not here to listen me to blather on," said Björn. "You're here to find the Geth Prime, aren't you? It's currently being stored in a warehouse area not far from here that's used by merc groups and other scummy bunches for storing things before shipping them off-station. I'll upload the exact location to your omni-tool. You'd better hurry; my sources tell me that they're going to be moving it soon."

"Thanks for your help, Björn. Maybe now we can get to the bottom of this little mystery." He didn't really believe that, expecting that he would be continue to be led on this wild goose chase for some time more.

Björn leaned back in his chair. "I hear you are going to be making an attack on the Collectors. Well, good luck with that."

After departing Björn's estate, Shepard began wondering if any of this had really happened, or it were all just a dream. Maybe Gardner had slipped some mind-altering chemical into his breakfast? It was no acid trip. He really _had_ just experienced a conversation with a talking grizzly bear, which in terms of major events in his life story had to rank up there with becoming the first human Spectre and killing a Reaper.

The three of them made their way to the coordinates on Shepard's omni-tool which, as Björn had said, was a warehouse district of sorts. Far back in Omega's history, when the station had served as a Prothean mining colony, this part of it had been an ore processing facility where element zero was refined before it was shipped out. Even under the stewardship of the Protheans, Omega had a reputation for having a less than stellar safety record. It was not unheard of for hapless workers to fall into the machinery and end up being ground into a fine paste, and to make matters worse their deaths would often go unnoticed. That meant that anyone unpacking a shipment of refined element zero from Omega was often in for a rather nasty surprise. Now, however, the ore processing facility was a maze of crates and shipping containers, which meant plenty of opportunities for an ambush.

"Not a lot of room to manoeuvre here, Shepard," said Garrus, taking his sniper rifle down off his back. "I'm going to take to the high ground and establish a sniper position."

"Good idea."

"Don't worry, I'll keep an eye out for any flying, fire-breathing quarians swooping down on us."

That left Shepard and Tali, who quickly and quietly wound their way through the maze of crates and containers. In one of these crates was the fully intact Geth Prime, which Tali had set her omni-tool to scan for. There was no sign of anyone else with them in the warehouse, but Shepard wasn't taking any chances. He already had his Revenant machine gun out, which would be absolutely lethal in these close quarters, as would Tali's shotgun. Having still seen no trace of another soul in this place, Shepard was beginning to think that they had beaten their adversaries to the Geth Prime, but that delusion was shattered the moment they rounded a corner and found themselves confronted by a group of well-armed individuals.

They were like no one else Shepard had seen before, clad head to toe in armour that was so black it was as if light simply fell into it. Their helmets completely covered their heads, making it impossible to determine what species they belonged to. The Cerberus operative they'd rescued from the _MSV Rosalina_ mentioned something like this before his rather untimely discombobulation.

A half-second later he and Tali were under a hail of gunfire, forcing them to take cover behind a stack of crates. Shepard felt something cold hit him in the face, which turned out to be ice flakes. _Their guns fire ice bullets? That_ was something he hadn't seen before.

"Get the geth to the ship! I'll hold these bastards off!" one of them shouted. His voice was filtered through some sort of scrambler that gave it an unnerving, distinctly mechanical tone.

Gathering his wits, Shepard glanced out of cover and, seeing that there was only one of his adversaries standing before him, stood up and let loose with a barrage of fire from the Revenant, while Tali joined in with a couple of blasts from her shotgun. He expected the enemy to fall quickly to this sustained assault, but to Shepard's amazement the man's shields absorbed everything, even a few sniper rounds from Garrus. He cycled a thermal clip just as their attacker began laying down another round of suppressing fire. At some point his heatsink would reach capacity, but either his weapon didn't use such a system or had some massive heatsink installed because he was able to fire non-stop for an absurd length of time. Garrus was able to land several more well-placed shots, but those too were merely soaked up by their attacker's shields.

Shepard readied himself to launch another assault, but Tali stopped him. "I can sap his shields, but I don't know how long it'll be before they recharge! Tell Garrus to take a shot as soon they're drained!"

He relayed the plan to Garrus over the radio while Tali readied her omni-tool's ShieldJack program, a rather nifty little utility that sapped an adversary's shields and used them to recharge one's own. She leaned out of cover and hit their attacker with the ShieldJack, just as Garrus was lining up the perfect headshot. But Tali didn't realise that draining shields this strong was far too much for her suit's own shield emitters to handle. A huge burst of energy surged through her omni-tool and into her suit, knocking her off her feet and sending her flying into a nearby wall.

His shields gone, the attacker made a move to head back into cover, but Garrus was too quick on the trigger. He landed a shot squarely in the middle of his head, and while it did not penetrate his helmet, the sheer force of the impact was enough to snap his neck and kill him instantly.

The warehouse fell quiet, the rest of their attackers having fled the scene. When he saw Tali lying in the ground and groaning in pain he immediately took her hand and helped her back to her feet. She wasn't quite all together, however, and Shepard was forced was to take hold of her to keep her from falling again. Predictably, Garrus came around just in time to see this.

"Oh, I'm sorry commander, should I leave the two of you alone for a while?"

"Very funny. Did you see where the rest of them went? I couldn't see a thing from this position."

"They loaded the Geth Prime onto their ship, and I imagine they've already gone to FTL by now. I tried taking a few shots at them but my weapon was ineffective against their shields. I've never seen personal barriers that strong."

Once Tali was able to stand on her own Shepard walked over to the corpse of their attacker. His helmet was completely opaque, making it impossible to determine what species this person belonged to, although he possessed five fingers, meaning he was likely human. His armour was pure, flat black, with no markings or insignias, which was quite unusual compared to the numerous mercenary groups operating on Omega. The weapon he used was likewise strange, and it did not look like any gun Shepard had ever seen before (and he had seen a _lot _of guns in his time).

"His suit is blocking my omni-tool scans," Garrus said as he was kneeling over the body. "I can't get anything off him. Whoever these people were they sure didn't want anyone knowing who they were. We should take his gun and his body back to the _Normandy_ for a full examination."

"You...you mean carrying a dead body through the streets?" said Tali, who was still a bit woozy. "Won't someone notice that?"

Garrus just shrugged. "Well this _is _Omega..."

Indeed, the thought of carrying a corpse back to the ship was a bit morbid, but he was greatly curious as to who this person was, along with whatever technology was present in his armour and weaponry. "All right Garrus, you take his arms, I'll take his legs. Tali, grab his gun."

"What? Why am I on dead body duty?" he protested.

"Because Tali's still a little weak after her shields got overloaded. Now let's get going."

"Hmph...you're just doing this because she's got wings and can breathe fire."

Through the glass of her helmet, Tali shot him a look that said, in one single glance: "Our ship's turian is a thirteen-year old boy," "I want a transfer," and "I'm going to kill you as soon as this mission is done with."

* * *

Once they were back on the _Normandy_ Joker wasted no time in getting away from Omega as fast as possible. At the moment Shepard was relaxing on the crew deck, enjoying a glass of Scotch from Aethyta's private stocks. She hated the stuff herself, but it was popular enough among the crew that she kept it around nonetheless.

"I am going to go to this 'Scotland' one day," she declared, "and kill _everybody. _That'll teach them to make this mockery of liquor!"

"Well it's not so bad once you get over the fact that it's been flavoured with decaying vegetation matter."

She gave a contemptuous grunt, then poured herself a drink. "It's even worse than the crap those turians brew. But what can you expect from a race of hardasses? I'm sure their idea of fun probably involves hurting each other."

Shepard had to laugh at that after hearing Garrus' suggestion of having full-contact sparring down in the cargo hold. His thoughts were interrupted by heavy footfalls behind him, which could only belong to Grunt.

"Where is my lunch?" he growled.

Aethyta reached under the counter and produced a large brown paper bag. "Here you go. Just don't make a mess down in the cargo hold or you'll be cleaning it up yourself, young man!"

"Thanks, mum," he said before heading for the elevator.

"Mum?" said Shepard, raising an eyebrow.

"He's a growing krogan; he needs a parental figure."

Shepard finished his drink and made his way to the armoury, where Garrus was dissecting the strange weapon they had recovered from Omega. Normally the armour was the domain of Jacob Taylor, but he was spending less time there after he discovered that Kasumi would watch him work out while she stood in a corner, cloaked. Shepard always liked coming here, as the large number of guns on the racks and tables always made him want to squeal with delight.

The weapon itself looked mostly conventional in its design except for a large cylinder attached to its underside. There was also no place for a thermal clip to go, confirming his suspicion that the weapon used some other method of dissipating heat.

"So what have you got for me, Garrus?"

"I'd thought I'd seen every weapon in galaxy on Omega and on the _Normandy,_ but this here is something unique."  
"How so?"

He held up the partially-disassembled rifle. "Most guns shave bullets off a block; it's simple and means you won't run out of ammo any time soon. This gun doesn't work like that. Instead of an ammunition block, it uses water."

"Water?"

"In this cylinder here," he said, pointing to the component in question. "The gun shapes the water into a projectile, flash-freezes it down to nearly absolute zero, then uses a mass accelerator to propel it. The system needs far less cooling than a typical firearm, and the projectiles melt a short while afterwards so there's no way to trace them to one specific weapon. This must be the weapon they used on that Cerberus ship, and why we couldn't find any bullets in the crews' bodies."

"Any idea who made this thing?"

"I've run a search through every database of weapons manufacturers in the galaxy and I've found nothing. I'm guessing that whoever makes this particular rifle doesn't sell it to anyone."

Their discussion was interrupted by Dr. Chakwas speaking over the intercom. "Shepard, I need to see you down in the medical bay."

"Ah, she's probably finished hacking up that person I shot," said Garrus. "You better go see what she wants."

* * *

Down in medical Dr. Chakwas stood over the body, looking a bit troubled. To Shepard's surprise Tali was there as well, although he quickly guessed that she was there for treatment after getting flung into a wall back on Omega. Of all the places on the _Normandy_, medical was the last place he usually wanted to go since, being a soldier and all that, the only reason he might ever come here was for either a physical or for some ghastly wound he'd received in battle.

"I've just finished examining your friend here," she said, "though it's proven more...difficult...then I anticipated."

"How so?"

"This armour he's wearing isn't just armour – it's a full environmental suit. You see, he's a quarian."

Now it was clear why Tali had been called here. She stepped back from the table, giving only a quiet "_Keelah..."_

"I must admit it took some length of time to determine this. His suit is apparently designed to block out any form of scanning, and it's self-sealing as well, to the point where I couldn't even make a basic incision without it sealing up seconds later."

"But he's got five fingers," said Shepard, looking down at the body.

"The extra two digits are part of the suit and not his body," the doctor explained. "Whoever designed it obviously wanted the wearer to be able to pass as another species, or at least conceal his identity as a quarian. For what reason, I can only guess, though I'd wager that this quarian belongs to some sort of secret military organisation."

He turned to Tali. "You ever heard of something like this?"

"No, never. But if something like that existed, I wouldn't know about it."

"There's more, commander," said the doctor. "This man has had extensive cybernetic enhancements, far more so than the typical quarian. All major organs have added synthetic redundancies, his blood is filled with nanomachines, and his suit's optical sensors are linked directly to his visual cortex; he doesn't even 'see' with his own eyes. But that's not what troubles me, commander. I've examined some of these cybernetic implants, and many of them are exact copies of the implants Cerberus used in rebuilding you."

A hush fell over the medical bay as Shepard processed this latest revelation. "Guess that explains why they were after information on the Lazarus Project. As for stealing the Geth Prime from a Cerberus ship, it makes sense that it would be quarians who were behind it. They have ample reason to want an intact geth, and they've no love for Cerberus."

Tali was not reassured. "I...I still don't like this, Shepard. To think that my people would have some 'black ops' organisation...it...it doesn't feel right."

"Most races have something like that, Tali. The Council has the Spectres, the salarians have their STG, and the asari have their commandos." Miranda once claimed that Cerberus was humanity's answer to these groups, although in Shepard's opinion Cerberus was far too incompetent for that.

"I know, but..." She trailed off, unable to come up with a rebuttal. "I wonder what they're going to do with the Geth Prime? After that...incident...on the _Alarei,_ the Conclave passed a law forbidding anyone from bringing geth components back to the fleet." She turned away, wringing her hands. "I'll have to send a message to Shaala about this, if she can tell me anything. I don't like to think that we would keep secrets from each other, Shepard."

"Let me know if you find anything."

"There's something else, Shepard. I finished the data recovery from that OSD we got from the radio host. I was able to reconstruct most of the virus' code, and I extracted a set of coordinates that information was to be transmitted to."

"Let me guess: it was sending it back to the Migrant Fleet?"

She shook her head. "No, it wasn't it. The coordinates in the code point to PSR E1337+42, a pulsar my people called _Vannatar._ The name means 'shimmering beacon' in our language, as the pulsar beam sweeps across the homeworld. I don't know why the information would be sent there; perhaps whoever is receiving it would be lost in the pulsar's radiation."

"If it's not too far away we can check it out," he said. "We've got little to do until the Illusive Man finds a way to get us through the Omega-4 relay. Somehow I don't think I'm going to like whatever he's got planned. Probably another derelict ship filled with abominations or something."

Shepard was so very, very _right_ about that.


	8. They Saved Prazza's Brain

**Note: If you enjoy this story, you may wish to read my other work-in-progress, _The Legend of Dragon's Gate,_ a three-way crossover between Baldur's Gate 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and The Legend of Zelda. Unless, of course, you've never played those games, in which case you obviously won't be interested.  
**

* * *

Chapter 8 – They Saved Prazza's Brain

* * *

"This is the new test subject?"

With a push of a button the tank raised into position, revealing the human test subject currently in stasis. Hvenna'Tor was quite impressed with his physique, though he had no particular fetish for humans, unlike the individual in charge of this project.

"Who is he again?"

He glanced at the datapad. "His name is 'Slab Bulkhead' and he's a pornographic actor. Made it big in _Fornax_ magazine, I hear. Won back a bunch of subscribers after that nasty business with the Forbidden Issue."

Taedal'Rhen grunted in contempt. "And to think one of our own was responsible for that. Prazza should never have been allowed off the flotilla. Everyone knew he was unstable."

"Just be thankful you weren't the one they sent to Freedom's Progress to recover his body, or what was left of it. They ordered us _specifically_ to recover as much of his brain as possible. You ever tried recovering someone's brain after they've been hit in the face with a rocket launcher?"

"Sounds messy."

"Indeed. But with bio-reconstruction and synthetic implants we've successfully rebuilt it. We're going to be hooking it into the Geth Prime this afternoon."

Taedal fidgeted. "But...why Prazza? What's so special about him, aside from the fact that he was a gibbering moron?"  
He sighed. "It's much too complicated for me to explain to you. Let me just say that the..._unique_...configuration of his neuroanatomy makes him exceptionally well-suited to this project."

"And if it fails? All test subjects up to Subject 39 have been dismal failures."

"But I have a good feeling about Subject 40; Mr. Bulkhead here. And if that fails, well, there are plenty more idiot humans in the galaxy, aren't there?"

* * *

That night Tali found herself unable to sleep, tossing and turning endlessly in her bunk. The business with the quarian they had taken from Omega continued to torment her long into the night, though a part of her knew it was naïve to think that her people wouldn't train shadow operatives. Earlier that night she had sent a message back to Shaala, but so far she had not heard anything back. That was assuming that Shaala was at liberty to say anything about any sort of quarian black ops group. As distasteful as the idea of keeping secrets like this was, Tali had to acknowledge that it was mere practicality that sensitive military operations were only known to a select few.

This was not the only thing keeping her awake. She kept thinking back to that moment on Omega when Shepard had helped her to her feet and then caught her just as she was about to fall. Tali knew it was mere reflex on his part and meant absolutely nothing, but all she could think about was how good it felt to be held in his arms and how very much she would like to feel that again. She went back and forth for what felt like hours on whether or it not was healthy to have thoughts like these.

A pang of guilt struck her, guilt that this was a terribly selfish thing for her to want. They were on a dangerous mission, flying into the Omega-4 relay, a place from which no ship had ever returned. So much depended on them stopping the Collectors and the last thing they needed was being distracted by their feelings. Even if Tali could find some way to be close to Shepard without the encumbrance of her suit, there was a very good chance she could become ill, perhaps seriously so, and that would negatively affect her performance on the mission. No, she thought, it was too much of a risk. Better to forget this idle fancy of hers and concentrate on what was important. And if this truly were a suicide mission, what did it matter if she had some fling right before her death?

But no matter how many Tali told herself this, she could never quite believe it. Though she tried hard to ignore it, the fact remained that she was terribly lonely, having lost all of her family and seeing most of her friends die on Haestrom. Was it so wrong for her to desire companionship right before they flew off into some battle from which they might never return? A part of her would have said yes, that the proper thing for a quarian to do was subordinate her own desires to the greater good. That was the ideal she had always striven for all her life, but now she had foolishly developed feelings for her captain and could not wish them away no matter how she tried.

As proof of her affection, Tali had bought a present for Shepard during the last stopover at the Citadel. She knew he had a hobby of collecting ship models and putting them in a display case up in his quarters, so when she saw a model of the _Normandy SR-1 _on sale at a souvenir shop, Tali knew at once that she had to buy it for him. But ever since then she had never been able to work up the nerve to actually give it to him. What if he took it the wrong way, thinking it was an overt romantic gesture and rejecting her right on the spot? What if he considered it inappropriate for someone to give her captain a gift? Tali knew very little of how humans handled gift-giving; among her people it would be very unusual for someone to give a gift solely to an individual..

Eventually Tali got fed up with her inability to fall asleep and climbed out of bed. Maybe there was something to do on the crew deck that would take her mind off her troubles for a while. A few off-duty crewmen were seated at the mess table, watching some big important game on a holographic screen, while Aethyta was showing Grunt an old krogan weapon that had once belonged to her father. It looked like a sword, albeit one much too large for anything but a krogan to wield. On closer inspection, the weapon did not have an cutting edge like a typical sword, but rather a series of saw-like teeth along the blade.

"...and this is a krogan chainsword that belonged to my dad. Ancient krogan warriors would carry these into battle and use them to cut through the armour of their enemies and kill them in a spectacularly gory fashion."

Grunt help the enormous blade, a smile (or what Tali thought was a smile; krogan weren't all that terribly expressive) creeping up his mouth. "I'd like to see the Collectors get a taste of this! Ha!"

Aethyta stashed the chainsword under the counter when she saw Tali approaching. "Ah, another one of the crew who can't get to sleep and is looking for a drink and advice, am I right?"

Tali froze. "Oh, well...I guess."

"So, what'll it be? The quarian neutronium, or are your problems not bad enough to warrant something that strong?"

"I...I don't know. Do you have any human drinks that are safe for quarians?"

"Let me see," she said, looking through the shelves of bottles behind the counter. "I've got a few bottles of vodka, here that oughta do it." Aethyta held up one of the bottles, which was filled with a clear liquid indistinguishable from water. "Hmm, and according to the bottle label, this was distilled in some Earth city named 'Samara.' Well _that's_ an odd coincidence." She poured out a full glass of the stuff, which would be a rather enormous amount for a human, but was typical for quarians who could handle large quantities of alcohol better than humans. Tali found that it had a burning taste, but it was a _pleasant_ burning.

"So what's the big problem that's keeping you awake?" Aethyta asked.

She wanted desperately to talk with someone about her feelings, but she didn't want anyone to find out about her feelings for Shepard. "It...it's a bit personal, I don't know if I should be talking about it..."

The matriarch crossed her arms. "Tali, is this one of these questions that begins with, 'I have a friend who...?'"

Tali stepped back. "N...no! I mean, well...yes...that's what I wanted to talk to you about. It's just that...um...there's someone back on the flotilla, and...uh...he's on his Pilgrimage. He met this...asari...and he...he's really interested in her, but he isn't sure that she's interested in him, or if he-, I mean _she -_ would be interested in a quarian. So...what I want to know is, what should I – _he –_ do in this...this situation?"

Aethyta saw through her flimsy story at once, but decided to play along. "Do you want to know what _I_ would do in that situation, or what your friend _should_ do?"

"Is there a difference?"

"Damn right there is! If I were interested in someone, I'd grab em' and take em' around the nearest corner for a roll! Just do whatever comes to mind and damn the consequences! That's the only way to live."

"And...what's your other advice?"

"Tell your friend that he should come right out and tell the object of his desire how he feels. Sure, it might hurt if she rejects him, but better that than never knowing." Aethyta then leaned in close and lowered her voice. "Let met tell you this: there is nothing, _nothing_ worse than looking back and thinking about what could have been. Say your 'friend' decides that he doesn't want to risk getting turned down, so he keeps his mouth shut. But the object of his desire never learns that he's interested in her, so eventually she finds happiness with someone else and your friend spends the rest of his life drowning his sorrows in cheap liquor because he didn't have the guts to tell her how he felt."

"I...I guess that makes sense."

"And one more thing, Tali. You don't have to be coy with me; I know you're talking about Shepard."

She stepped back from the counter. "Wh...what? N...no, I...I mean...how did you know?"

Aethyta waved her hand. "Oh come on, _everyone_ knows you have a thing for him! Even a senile hanar could see that, given the way you talk about him."

It felt like something had grabbed her heart and stopped it from beating. "Then does...Shepard know?"

"Why wouldn't he?" she answered with a shrug. "This is a small ship and word travels fast. I wouldn't be surprised if that frilly twit of a secretary told him, given how she likes to play ship's counsellor."

Tali's heart sank upon hearing this. If Shepard knew, and he had never expressed any interest in her, then that had to mean he felt nothing for her. "But he...he hasn't said anything to me," she said despairingly. "I...I guess that means he's not interested...why would he be?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say _that. _I think he's interested, he just doesn't know it yet."

"What...what does that mean?"

"It means you should go and tell him how you feel, damn it! If you're nervous, you should get hammered to take the edge off. Actually, forget about that; you'll probably just end up saying something embarrassing, and I don't think Shepard will like 'Drunk Tali.' Well, unless he's drunk himself. Now there's an idea! Get him liquored up, then lay it on him. Of course, then he might not remember it the next morning..."

She ignored all this. "But...what if being together with him is the wrong thing to do? I mean, I could get sick, he could get...get distracted."

Aethyta laughed. "Sick? Listen babe, you're both different species, and neither of you are asari, so that means you'll never have to worry about the most horrible STD in the galaxy: _children._ And as for distraction, well, I think we could all use some distraction from the fact that we might all die horribly at the end of the mission."

"I...I guess that makes sense." Tali didn't know if she really believed that, or if she were just trying to talk herself into thinking that pursuing a relationship with Shepard was a good idea. "Maybe...maybe when we're finished investigating this pulsar system, I'll tell him."

"Good. Let me know how things turn out, and if wild, passionate lovemaking ensues."

"Um...yes..." She slowly stepped away from the counter before quickly making her way back to the crew bunks.

That left the issue of just how she was going to confess her feelings to him. Obviously going up to his quarters and screaming "I love you!" wasn't going to work. Just how did you let someone know you were interested in them? For Tali, it was not an issue of quarian/human cultural differences, but rather that she had never felt this strongly about someone before and had no relationship experience whatsoever. Then there was the issue of just how their relationship would be seen by her people. Quarian/human couples were almost unheard-of, and it was childishly naïve of her to think that everyone would accept her choice of partner. And what of Shepard? Quarians weren't exactly held in high regard, and being arguably the most famous human in the galaxy, he would surely take some heat for being seen with her.

But all this was hypothetical anyway. There was no guarantee, nor was it even probable, that Shepard would return her feelings. Yet Tali knew that Aethyta was right, that never knowing would be far worse than the sting of rejection. And so she made up her mind that when this mission was over she would tell him...somehow.

* * *

When the _Normandy_ entered the PSR E1337+42 system, Shepard was up in the cockpit, eager to see where their search had taken them this time. If he remembered his astronomy lessons correctly, a pulsar was a remnant of a star that had gone supernova, and which emitted beams of radiation along the axis of its magnetic field. This was offset from its rotational axis, which caused the beams of radiation to sweep through space like a lighthouse beam. He was rather impressed with himself for remembering all that from off the top of his head.

This particular system was a sight to behold. The pulsar was young, being a remnant of a star that had gone supernova only a few thousand years ago. It was shrouded a swirling veil of dust and gas stirred up by the pulsar's super-strong magnetic field (which was about a hundred million teslas in strength, according the cockpit readouts). More worrying were the numerous radiation warnings being thrown up on one of the displays. The entire system was bathed in high-energy synchrotron radiation, although the _Normandy's_ hull should have been sufficient to shield the crew from its effects. That would not help them at all, however, should they be so stupid as to fly into the pulsar beam. This would result in the ship being instantly disintegrated, a rather inglorious fate that had befallen Prazza's great-great-grandfather.

EDI had already completed a full sweep of the system. "Radiation from the pulsar is interfering with my scans, but I detect three planets in orbit."

"How is that possible?" said Shepard. "Any planets in this system would have been pulverised when the star went supernova."

"It is possible that the planets formed after the supernova, or they are the rocky cores of gas giants whose outer layers were blown away in the explosion. I am detecting the presence of an artificial construct on the second planet; it appears to be the ultimate destination for the data retrieved from Cerberus."

"Take us in, Joker, and make sure the stealth system's engaged. EDI, what can you tell me about this 'artificial construct'?"

"I can get no readings inside the construct as it is heavily shielded, most likely to protect it from the pulsar's radiation. It's silhouette is similar to that of quarian ships of the Migrant Fleet, suggesting a re-purposed spacefaring vessel."

That confirmed what they already knew – that quarians were behind the hacking attempt on Cerberus, and with any luck they would find out just what they were up to. There was no telling what they might find at this point, although Shepard knew it was nothing good.

All of the planets in the system were little more than barren hunks of rock, lashed with radiation of such intensity that anyone not wearing a shielded hardsuit would be killed instantly. When they neared their destination it was revealed that there were two separate structures on the planet's surface, both of them being former quarian vessels that had been anchored to the ground. With the _Normandy's_ stealth system it was unlikely that anyone down there was aware of their presence in orbit, but at the same time there was no way to tell who or what they might face.

With two facilities to investigate, Shepard decided to send two teams. He would lead the first, with Tali, Garrus, and Kasumi at his side, wanting a mixture of firepower and tech-saaviness. The other team would be lead by Miranda, alongside Jacob, Mordin, and Zaeed. The two teams packed themselves into Kodiak shuttle, although Kasumi was quite annoyed that she didn't get to sit next to Jacob.

"Remember that we have no idea what might be in store for us. I don't want anyone getting trigger-happy; it might be that the people down there aren't even armed."

"I highly doubt that," Garrus quipped.

"You don't know that!" Tali shot back. "I...I won't take up arms against a fellow quarian, unless they...they..." She didn't finish, and Shepard wondered if he had not made a mistake in allowing her to come.

Below, they could now make out the two quarian vessels lying on the planet's surface. This had to be the most dismal planet Shepard had ever seen, being nothing than a barren, grey rock that was featureless in all directions. There was barely any light to illuminate this dreary world, with the pulsar being little more than a tiny speck of white light in the distance. So far no one was shooting at them or attempting to scare them off, which was probably a good thing. It could, however, indicate that the station was abandoned. Going by personal experience, that would mean that things were going to be far, far _worse_.

The shuttle landed on a small docking pad located next to what once been the airlock of the quarian ship. Everyone put on their helmets in preparation for disembarking into a vacuum, and the doors opened with a loud _hiss_ of escaping air. One advantage to being a quarian, Shepard thought, was that one didn't need a hardsuit when going somewhere with no atmosphere, or one that was unbreathable.

Tali stared up at the ship, shaking her head. "How could someone take two ships from the flotilla without anyone noticing?"

"They're not exactly large, Tali," said Shepard. "They're no larger than the _Normandy._ There's tens of thousands of ships in the Migrant Fleet; I can imagine someone making off with two ships and no one being the wiser."

"Ships are our most valuable resource, Shepard! _Someone_ would notice. Whoever is behind this must be someone of great influence; perhaps an admiral or some member of the Conclave."

Behind them the shuttle lifted off, carrying the second team to their insertion point. "Well we won't find out anything just standing here. Can you hack through the airlock controls?"

Tali brought up her omni-tool and quickly hooked it into the airlock system. "Just give me a minute. There doesn't appear to be any sort of security system. They likely never expected anyone to try to break in."

Kasumi, irreverent as ever, wasn't very impressed with this example of quarian shipbuilding. "I hate to say it, Tali, but this ship is _really_ ugly."

Garrus was of the same mind. "I agree. It lacks the strong, focused lines of a turian warship."

Tali ignored them and continued working. Less than a minute later the large, outer doors of the airlock swung open and the four of them filed inside. The second team, lacking anyone of Tali's technical expertise, took a little longer to gain entrance. In fact, Zaeed had decided that the best way in was to use a number of breaching charges he had brought along. It wasn't as subtle as hacking the door controls, but it got the job.

A few seconds later the outer doors closed and the inner doors opened, revealing the interior of the former ship. It looked more or less the same as the ships Shepard had seen during his brief visit to the Migrant Fleet, but unlike those, this vessel's halls were sparse, without any of the crates and containers jammed into every nook and crevice. More obvious, however, were the dead bodies of quarians strewn about, along with bullets holes and scorch marks on the walls and floor. The quarians hadn't died with weapons in their hands, meaning they were unarmed with the shooting began.

"_Keelah..._what happened here?" said Tali, her voice emotionless. Shepard could not tell for certain, but he guessed that she was thinking back to the fight about _Alarei._

Miranda's voice over the radio jarred him his thoughts. "We've breached the airlock, commander, and are making our way into the ship. No sign of anyone."

"Looks like a major firefight took place here," he radioed back. "Lots of bodies."

They proceeded down the hallway, which branched left and right. Unsure of which way to go, they went right, finding more corpses along the way. Their air was thick with tension, and Shepard kept a firm grip on his Revenant light machine gun, expecting a confrontation at any moment. Whoever had killed these quarians had not been very precise or subtle about it, as the decks and bulkheads were so riddled with bullet holes it was a wonder they hadn't collapsed.

"We're inside the ship," said Miranda. "They've removed all the bulkheads and converted it in some sort of holding area for prisoners. Shepard, they were keeping humans here; we've got bodies still in their cells."

"Any survivors?"

"None so far; it looks like someone went through this place and killed every last one of them. I'll let you know if we find anything more."

Tali was visibly distraught at hearing all this. "I...I can't believe this, Shepard. To think that my own people would...would do something like this..."

"Maybe there's someone still alive who can tell us what happened here. We've got to keep moving."

At the end of the hall they reached what had once been the ship's medical bay, only now it had been converted into something much worse. Lining the walls were large stasis tanks, similar to the one Grunt had been kept in on Korlus. All of them were empty save one, which was occupied by a human male. Shepard hoped that the man was still alive, but a quick scan with his omni-tool revealed that the stasis pod had lost power and the person inside had died. He glanced around at the other tanks, wondering how many others had been kept here, or for what sick purpose they had been used for.

"Wait, I recognise this man, Shepard," Garrus said. "Back when I was with C-Sec we busted him for red sand possession. His name's Slab Bulkhead, and if I remember correctly he's a porn star who starred in several issues of _Fornax._"

"I know him, too," said Kasumi. "He owns a fancy estate on Bekenstein. I broke in there a few times and took some of his prized possessions, but I don't think he ever realised they were gone. The man was well-endowed but damn, was he ever a moron."

The true horror of this place, however, lay in the middle of the room. The former medical bay was lined with examination tables, all of them empty save one. On it was something Shepard could only describe as an abomination. Part of it was a typical geth bipedal platform, but where its upper body should have been there was a human torso fused with the rest of the platform. Wires and tubes ran from the geth's hardware and into the man's flesh, with most of them connected to the base of his skull. Whoever this poor bastard was, he had not died peacefully, and his face was frozen in a scream of agony. The table on which this terrible creation lay was drenched with blood, much of which had spilled onto the floor. He could only guess at what horrors this man had endured in becoming this..._thing, _and whoever was responsible for it all likely hadn't bothered to make the process painless.

Shepard backed away from the table in revulsion. "Christ, what the hell were these people doing?"

"Shepard, I...I know this man, too," said Kasumi, looking rather nauseated. "This is Douglas Falkner. He's a famous race car driver on the Zero-G circuit. But...how did he end up here?"

There was a nearby computer console which still had power, so Shepard used his omni-tool to establish a link with EDI. He hoped to get some his answers to whatever had gone on here, or at least the names of those responsible. He had seen some sick experiments in his time, but nothing compared to seeing someone trying to fuse a human body with that of a geth. This was the sort of thing Cerberus was known for, not the quarians.

It only took EDI a few moments to sift through the computer's databanks for information. "According to the research logs, the quarians were attempting to fuse the human nervous system with the geth platform's hardware, as well as interfacing his brain with the geth's neural network. However, the subject's cause of death was a massive brain haemorrhage, suggesting that his physiology could not handle the connection. It is possible the quarians were attempting to continue the work of Project Overlord and gain control over the geth, though they had obviously had no success."

"Is there any information in there about who's responsible for this?"

"This facility utilises a quantum-entanglement communications device similar to the one installed on the _Normandy._ Presumably this allows them to communicate in real-time with the Migrant Fleet or some other location; it is beyond my capabilities to say where, exactly. The databanks contain no information on anyone behind this 'research'; there are only mentions of an individual known as 'The Overseer'. It may be that this facility is a merely a cell within a larger shadow organisation."

"You mean like a quarian Cerberus?" said Garrus.

Tali was understandably aghast that idea. "No, that...that's impossible! We would never have something like that!"

"It'd be hard for them keep something like this secret," Shepard added. "Even if there were a high-ranking officer in charge of it all, someone would notice all the resources being diverted to building and running this facilities."

Kasumi, meanwhile, was busy doing some hacking of her own, making her way into the video feeds from various monitoring devices throughout the station. Whoever was in charge of all this was clearly cut from the same cloth as the Illusive Man, keeping a close watch on his research projects.

"These video bugs were everywhere," she explained. "Let me bring up me the last recording from this room."

The scene played out on her omni-tool's display. In it, a quarian was standing before the stasis tank containing Mr. Bulkhead, who was awake and frantically pounding on the inside of the tank, his screams muffled by the thick glass.

"Ah, the human porn star has awoken," said the quarian. "It is time for more...experiments."

He pushed a button on a nearby console, sending a jolt of electricity into the stasis tank and causing Slab Bulkhead to scream in agony.

"The pain will only be passing. You should survive the process," he said coldly before giving him another jolt of electricity.

Another quarian entered the frame. "What the hell are you doing?" he said.

"I'm in the middle of an experiment, fool! Do not interrupt me!"

"Experiment? Look, you're just giving the poor bastard random electrical shocks! You can't learn anything from that!"

The other quarian sighed. "All right, I'm just doing it because I'm bored, okay? And I don't like the look of this meatbag, either."

"Who is he?"

"Some porn star named 'Slab Bulkhead.' The Overseer had us take him from Tanfana, of all places."

"Was it difficult?"

"Not really. Mr. Bulkhead has to be the stupidest human I've ever met. Convincing him to come with us involved nothing more than making him an offer of cookies."

Suddenly there was a loud explosion and the sound of gunfire, at which point the recording ceased. "That's the last log before, well, whatever happened here."

"One of them mentioned 'Tanfana,'" said Shepard. "I've never heard of that place before."

Garrus explained it to him. "It's a planet out in the Terminus Systems which, as you can probably guess, is home to all sorts of dirty businesses. I think it's where the headquarters of _Fornax_ magazine is, I believe. Heh, 'dirty businesses.'"

That only raised more questions. "But why would they go to all the trouble of finding this one person?" Shepard asked. "If they needed humans for these sick experiments, they could have easily gotten them from slavers or mercs."

EDI had the answer to that. "According to the research logs, the less intelligent the test subject is, the more likely their brain is to withstand the connection with the geth. It is probable that the researchers were seeking out the least-intelligent individuals they could find, although I do not know why they were using only humans."

So now they knew what, exactly, the quarians had been trying to accomplish here, but they still had no idea what had caused all this death and destruction. He got Miranda on the radio and asked for a status report.

"We've finished searching this facility, commander. There's just holding cells and nothing more."

Shepard heard Zaeed speaking as well. "Goddamn waste of my time. I was hoping for some killing."

"Get your team back to the shuttle, Miranda, and make sure its ready to pick us up. We've still got some more of this place to look through."

"Understood, commander."

They left the laboratory and proceeded down another hallway, this one also filled with dead bodies and bearing the unmistakable signs of gunfire. Whatever had taken place here, they were moving closer to the cause of it, and when they rounded the corner they saw a massive set of steel doors, blown wide open by some incredibly powerful force.

Beyond the doors was a small yet high-ceilinged room, and from the blood, scorch marks, and bullet holes all over the place, it was obvious that this was the epicentre of whatever catastrophe had befallen this facility. In the middle of the room was a large circular platform with countless cables and wires running up from underneath the floor, which had once been connected to something on the platform but had since been torn away. It appeared as if the platform had been built to support (or perhaps restrain) something, and from the size of it Shepard guessed that it was just large enough to contain a Geth Prime. His suspicions proved correct when Kasumi downloaded the video surveillance footage from this room and played it on her omni-tool. It showed the Geth Prime that the quarians had stolen from the Cerberus lab ship in the middle of the platform, which had cables and wires connected to every part of it, looking like the geth equivalent of a life support machine. Two quarians stood near a computer display, occasionally glancing up at the Geth Prime.

"We've successfully linked the last of the geth's systems with Prazza's brain. Prepare to initiate the start-up sequence."

"Prepare? You're _always _preparing! Just do it!"

Power surged through the Geth Prime, bringing it back to life. But no sooner had it gone active then it immediately began pulling at its restraints and emitting a terrible noise, one that was unpleasantly familiar to Tali:

_"WAAAAAAAGH!"_

The Geth Prime then began spraying the area with gunfire courtesy of its pulse rifle, forcing the two quarians to take cover behind the console. _"Keelah! _ I thought you disarmed this thing!"

"I thought _you_ disarmed it!"

They had no more time to argue about it, as the Geth Prime instantly annihilated them with a siege pulse, which also knocked out the surveillance device, ending the video log.

Tali was dumbstruck. "Th...they kept Prazza's brain? H...how? And they put it in a geth?"

With the exception of Freedom's Progress, Shepard had been fortunate enough never to have experienced Prazza's stupidity in-person. From what Tali had told him, however, the idea of putting that man's brain into a Geth Prime had to be the dumbest thing one could possibly do.

"It...it's so horrible," said Tali, pacing about the room. "Even after he died, Prazza keeps on hurting people."

"I'm wondering," Garrus said, "if a Geth Prime was responsible for all this, then where is it now?"

As if in reply, there was a deafening crash from behind them, and when they turned around they saw that the Geth Prime had burst through the wall and, in true Prazza fashion, was now spraying gunfire everywhere without a care for whom he hit. No one could say if Prazza's brain was unable to handle the connection to the neural net and had gone crazy (well, crazier), or if he were just acting in his usual manner, albeit now able to wreck havoc in the body of a walking tank.

_"WAAAAAAAGH!" _screamed the Geth Prime, it's voice mechanical and distorted. Shepard trained his Revenant on the advancing geth and let loose with a continuous stream of fire, but it was not enough to bring down its shields. He tried to run for cover, too late, as the Geth Prime fired a siege pulse directly at him, sending a wave of pain through Shepard's body and causing him to go flying over a nearby railing. His last thought before he lost consciousness was whether the Geth Prime bore him any particular ill-will or animus, or whether it was simply trying to kill everything it saw. The true answer was that it was completely under the control of Prazza's brain, whose essence was that of complete and total hostility towards all life and whose very being was centred around destruction. Unfortunately he lost consciousness before he could see the Geth Prime suddenly turn to face the wall and fire its rocket launcher, blowing itself up.


	9. Fast Times at Fornax

Chapter 9 – Fast Times at Fornax

* * *

When Shepard came to, he expected to find himself in the med bay. Instead, he awoke in the middle of the _Normandy's_ CIC, and when he got to his feet he found that there were no wounds on his body despite his encounter with a Geth Prime's siege pulse. That told him something was very wrong, an impression that was only reinforced by the fact that the CIC was completely empty save for a red-headed woman wearing N7 armour. There was something strangely familiar about her, although he could not remember ever seeing her before.

"What...what happened?" he said, his head still a bit hazy. "And who are you? You aren't one of the _Normandy_ crew."

"I'm Commander Shepard," she replied.

He was left momentarily speechless. "But _I'm_ Commander Shepard."

"That's because I _am_ you...in a parallel universe where you happen to be female."

This was surprisingly easy for him to accept. "So, I am dead then? Is this some sort of afterlife?"

"No, you're not dead," she said. "You are just experiencing a momentary extraplanar transfer of consciousness."

"Oh, good. I died once already and there's no way I'm going through _that_ again."

"Now that that's out of the way, we can talk about a rather pressing issue. Specifically, the rather dismal state of your love life."

He crossed his arms. "We're flying into the eye of the storm, on a mission from which we may never return, and you want to talk about my _love life?"_

Female Shepard's face remained expressionless. "And that makes it all the more imperative that you find someone before going up against the Collectors. Admit it – you've never had a meaningful relationship in your life; you always moved on to another ship before you could ever really get close to anyone."

"So what's your advice, then? I still think I've got more important things to worry about."

"Maybe you do, but that doesn't mean the mission has to be all business, you know. As for my advice, I'm sure you've a noticed that a certain sweet young quarian is absolutely crazy about you."

"Tali? Look, I care about her, okay? We've been through a lot together, and I won't deny that there might have been some chemistry between us, but do you really think it's right for us to be together? I mean, she could get seriously ill, which might put the mission in jeopardy. You know I can't let that happen."

"I'm not saying you have to be intimate with her, Shepard, but would it do any harm to let her know that there's someone who cares about her? She's lost her entire family and most of her friends; I don't have to tell you how alone she must feel."

"I...I guess you're right," he answered meekly. "But, it just seems odd that Tali would have a thing for humans."

She rolled her eyes and groaned. "She doesn't have a 'thing' for humans, she has a 'thing' for _you! _I'm not saying the universe depends on the two of you hooking up; in fact you may end up inadvertently causing more havoc and mayhem just by being together, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try!"

"I...I suppose you're right. Is this the only thing you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Pretty much, yes."

Yet there were so many other things he wanted to ask her. "So, if you're basically me, then where are you in your mission right now?"

"We've just come back from Omega, where I helped Samara kill her daughter Morinth. It must have been terrible to have to kill one's own flesh and blood, but that monster deserved her fate. Can't fault her taste in music, though. It's a well-known fact that Burzum kicked ass."

He laughed. "I guess we're not _quite_ the same person."

"But enough of this; I've got a lovely evening planned with Garrus. This mission can't be all business, you know."

"Wait, you're...you and Garrus?"

"We've been a through a lot together, and he's had some rough times. And don't say it – I know there's some obvious...issues...with human/turian relationships. But enough about me. Off you go now!"

* * *

Waking for real this time, Shepard was greeted by the dull grey ceiling of the _Normandy's_ med bay. He didn't know how long he'd been out what had happened to his squad, and the last thing he could recall was getting hit by a Geth Prime's siege pulse. Then he'd encountered his female counterpart, although there was no telling if that were just a dream or actual reality. He sat up and groaned in pain, feeling like he'd just received a thrashing from an enraged krogan. This got the attention of Dr. Chakwas, who was busy working at her desk.

"I see you're awake, Commander," she said, walking over to him. "You had us all worried there for a while."

Every part of him ached, right down to his fingers and toes. "Ugh...how long was I out for?"

"Two days, five hours, and thirteen minutes. I must admit that were it not for the...upgrades...Cerberus used in rebuilding you, you likely would not have survived."

"And the rest of the people with me?"

"I'm glad to say that they all made out without any injuries. The crew's been terribly worried about you, Commander; I believe Tali was in here not less than a half-dozen times checking up on you."

He recalled female Shepard's words regarding Tali, but he was not in the mood to think about that right now. Of course, at that exact moment Garrus happened to be walking past the med bay and saw through the windows that Shepard was awake, so he set off to engineering to inform Tali that the commander had recovered.

"I'd advise against undertaking any more missions for the next few days," the doctor said. "You may be stronger than the average Alliance soldier, but you're not invincible."

"Huh, I guess I could do with a few days off."

The med bay doors opened and Garrus walked in, followed by Tali, who could not conceal her relief that he was alive. "You're...you're awake," she said, her voice low. She fidgeted about, as if she could not think of anything else to say, or at least anything that would not embarrass her in front of Garrus.

"So I take it the three of you hauled me back to the ship?" he asked.

"Yes, after the Geth Prime blew itself up with its own rocket launcher," said Garrus. "It would seem that once again Tali's friend Prazza has demonstrated a staggering inability to sustain life. The explosion ruptured one of the coolant conduits to the station's reactor, causing it to overheat. We got back the shuttle just as it was going critical."

"Let me guess, the entire place was destroyed in a massive explosion?"

"More or less."

That made him chuckle. "Another smoking crater in my wake. Nothing unusual about that, I suppose. Did we find out anything else about what was going on there, or who was responsible for it all?"

Garrus shook his head. "Nothing, I'm afraid. We don't know who this 'Overseer' is, and we don't know if anyone even escaped the massacre at the station. All we know is that two of the test subjects – Slab Bulkhead and Douglas Falkner – were likely abducted from the planet Tanfana. That's where Fornax's corporate headquarters is, and there's a popular Zero-G circuit there as well. It's a long shot, but we might find someone information there. I've already told Joker to set course for Tanfana, and we should arrive within a few hours.

"I appreciate that, Garrus, but you _are_ aware that Miranda is the ship's XO, right? As in the person who's in command when I'm incapacitated?"

"True, and as a turian I should have been aware of that fact. But you'll remember that I told that I don't think I'm a very _good_ turian."

"I also remember you telling me once that we should have full-contact sparring to resolve disputes among crewmembers. I take it you haven't been organising fights down in the cargo hold, have you?"

Tali answered for him. "No, he hasn't. I made sure of that."

"Another thing, commander," he said, ignoring Tali's jibe. "Matriarch Aethyta informs me that the managing director of _Fornax_ is an old friend of hers, an asari named Nehalennia. She says she'll be able to arrange a meeting, though I don't know how much she'll be able to tell us about who might have abducted Mr. Bulkhead."

"I'm sure you'll bring all the skills you learned in C-Sec to bear on the investigation, Garrus."

"I'm coming too," Tali said. "I want to see this Zero-G circuit for myself."

"Well have fun, the both of you. I won't be joining you; the doctor says I'm not to engage in any strenuous physical activity for the next few days."

If Aethyta were around to hear that, she would have made a joke about "strenuous physical activity," given Tali's presence in the room.

* * *

Tali had heard people speak of the planet Tanfana before, and little of it was good. It was a barely-habitable world out in the Terminus Systems that had once been a garden planet, but some catastrophe 100,000 years ago had annihilated nearly all life more advanced than bacteria, leaving it a barren, sand-blasted hellhole where anyone outside the pressurised confines of a building or vehicle was required to wear a breathing mask. Even from orbit the place looked depressing – a planet that was a uniform dull, dusty brown colour with the exception of the polar ice caps that provided most of Tanfana's drinking water.

The planet had a government, albeit one that was weak and mostly corrupt, allowing lawlessness to run rampant. In that way it was a bit like Omega, if not nearly to the same degree. The largest city on this world had the very imaginative name of City 37, as it was the 37th settlement established on the planet. Several times people had put forth a motion to give the city a name, but each the time the motion was either roundly ignored or the person responsible for bringing up the motion was assassinated. For the most part, City 37 was home to all manner of corporations and other disreputable organisations. _Fornax_ had no great reason to establish their HQ as nothing they produced violated the laws of Citadel space, but the company had decided to relocate there after the fiasco with Prazza and the Forbidden Issue had left the magazine with a tarnished image and countless lawsuits hanging over its head.

At the moment Tali and Garrus were in the cargo bay, waiting for Aethyta to join them. In her mind Tali kept kicking herself for not telling Shepard how she felt sooner, cursing her own meekness. The commander had very nearly died, and if he had, she would hate herself for not working up the courage to tell him sooner. When Tali wasn't beating herself up over that, she was chastising for herself for selfishly worrying that she might not have a chance to fulfil her own desires when the loss of the commander would have affected so many others in much worse ways. The mission was simply far more important than whatever it is she wanted from him, and no amount of wishful thinking on her part would ever change that.

Garrus was the first to break the silence. "You were really worried about the commander, Tali. You must have gone to the med bay to check up on him at least seven or eight times."

"Of course I was worried!" she snapped, not in the mood for banter at the moment. "W...wouldn't you be?"

He shrugged. "The Collectors killed Shepard, blew up his ship, and all it did was make him mad. He's been through a lot worse."

"That doesn't mean I don't worry about him! He...he's important to me, I...I don't want..." She stopped herself, not wanting to reveal the depths of her feelings, especially not in front of Garrus, of all people.

"You don't _what?"_ he asked in an obviously teasing manner.

"N...nothing! Just...nothing! I don't want to talk about this any more."

For a while neither of them spoke, until the silence between them became rather awkward. Tali wondered what was taking Aethyta so long to get down here.

"You're in love with him," said Garrus in a completely deadpan tone of voice.

"Wh...what? N...no, I mean, yes...but-"

"'No except yes'. That's an interesting way of putting it, Tali. Back in C-Sec I remember several suspects using that line during their interrogation."

She fumed, annoyed beyond words. "What...what does it matter to you, anyway? It's none of your business!"

Garrus remained calm, which only irritated her further. "I was just thinking that of all the women who are after the commander, you've probably got the best chance of actually getting him."

That wasn't what she expected to hear, and it left her momentarily speechless. "How...how do you mean?"

"You've known him for a long time, and I'd wager you probably know him as well or better than most people on this ship. I wouldn't count on Shepard making the first move, though; I get the impression that he's not an expert on relationships, especially interspecies ones."

"And I suppose you are?"

He grinned. "Of course. Human women have a rather intense fascination with turian men. It's a bit...odd."

Aethyta showed up at last, having been held up dealing with a mess Grunt had made in his living area. "Don't play with your food," she'd told him. "A krogan can't expect the luxury of live food on a ship!"

"So are we ready to go, then?" she asked.

"We were just waiting for you," said Garrus. "I must admit, going to the headquarters of some dirty magazine has to be one of the more...unusual...missions I've undertaken."

She laughed. "Yeah, and as smut goes, _Fornax_ really isn't all that great. There's lot of porno rags out there that are much, much dirtier if that's what you're into."

Tali had less than no interest in such things, being much more interested in the Zero-G circuit. It was a form of racing that was involved aircars racing less than a metre above the ground, at speeds approaching 2000 km/h or faster. The sport was banned in Citadel space due to the inherent danger (spectacular crashes were not only commonplace, but considered an essential part of any race), and when the sport moved into the Terminus systems it only became more extreme. There were almost no rules during the race, the only major regulations being those that forbade racers from installing weaponry on their vehicles, as this almost always resulted in the complete annihilation of the entire field of cars before even one lap was completed. Beyond that, however, the sport was more or less no-holds-barred, with drivers free to ram other cars off into the wall or off the track.

But Tali was less interested in the potential mayhem a typical race entailed, and more into the vehicles themselves. A typical Zero-G car was a finely-tuned machine capable of reaching breathtaking speeds, making them marvels of engineering that required a skilled mechanic to maintain and near superhuman reflexes to drive. During her days on the flotilla Tali would watch vids of the races during the few precious hours of the day when she was not working. Obviously they were not going to have time to watch an actual race, though she dearly wished they would have the opportunity. Perhaps they would get an opportunity to examine one of the Zero-G cars during their investigation, which was even better.

"So those quarians got Slab Bulkhead _and_ Douglas Falkner?" Aethyta said as they climbed into the shuttle. "I don't know much about Slab, but if Falkner's dead, then the galaxy just got a whole lot less sexier."

"You knew him?" Garrus said.

"Not personally, but everyone knew his reputation. The best way I've heard him described is that he was pure sex; the sort of man who could knock a woman up just by looking at her. I remember one time he got up in front of a bunch of screaming female fans and started doing pelvic thrusts, shouting '_Kneel_ before the Falkner! _Submit_ to him!' They had to put up kinetic barriers just to keep the ladies from jumping all over him."

The shuttle departed from the _Normandy,_ revealing the dreary-seeming planet below. Tanfana was a dull shade of brown that looked unappealing no matter what race one belonged to, with no geographic features of note and no valuable mineral resources in any significant concentrations. The only reason this planet had been settled at all was that all the worlds in the vicinity were even _less_ habitable than this one, and the countless merc bands, slavers, and pirates throughout the Terminus weren't exactly picky about where they set up their operations.

From high above, City 37 appeared as greyish blotch against the drab brown background the planet's surface, and as the shuttle drew nearer Tali's impression of the place did not improve. Depressingly, it looked like someone had taken all the buildings from Omega and transplanted them here, only now they were weather-beaten and covered in dust. The _Fornax _headquarters, oddly enough for a dirty magazine, was one of the cleaner-looking buildings, standing out like a gem amidst the sand. The building had actually been the former city hall of City 37, left empty after an angry mob, infuriated by the city council's decision to raise property taxes, stormed the place and slaughtered everyone inside.

They touched down on a small landing pad about halfway along the building's side; a necessity, as the streets below were too narrow and twisting for a shuttle to land. Upon exiting the shuttle they were greeted by a half-dozen Eclipse mercenaries, which seemed to Tali an absurd amount of protection for a pornographic magazine. Garrus and Aethyta put on their breathing masks, there reason for which was made immediately clear. There was a loud beeping from within Tali's helmet, and the HUD on her mask indicated that the planet's atmosphere had large concentrations of toxins, contaminants, irritants, and other nasty things that her suit had to scrub from the air just to make it breathable. Denizens of the city could eventually adapt to the poisoned atmosphere and breathe without a mask, albeit at the cost of thirty or forty years off their lives.

The Eclipse mercenaries led them inside, which was as different from the rest of the planet as night was from day. It was as luxurious as any place Tali had ever seen, with polished marble floors covered in red carpet, beautiful glass chandeliers hanging from the hallway ceiling, and statues of members of various races (all in the nude, of course) lining the halls. As if that were not a clear enough reminder of what this place was, the company had placed several posters along the walls showing famous centrefolds from _Fornax's _publication history. The one nearest the entrance showed a naked quarian and turian together in a rather intimate embrace, and while Tali felt dirty just looking at it (and made her hope that the turian in the picture had undergone proper self-sterilisation), there was something grotesquely fascinating about it.

"Now _there's_ an example of interspecies relationships," said Garrus with a chuckle. "I had no idea quarians were so flexible."

Tali turned away. "N...neither did I."

Minutes later they were greeted by a concierge, an asari wearing a dress that looked like it was tailored to reveal as much as possible whilst conforming to the most liberal standards of modesty. "You are Aethyta, yes? I'll take you to Nehalennia at once; I'm sure she'll be glad to see her old comrade-in-arms."

"How do you know this person, again?" Garrus said.

"She and I ran in the same merc band back when we were young and dumb. It's been a while since I've seen her, but she's obviously done well for herself. Done better than me, anyway."

The concierge led them through the maze of hallways and up to the next floor where Nehalennia awaited. Being the managing director of the company her office was quite large and well-appointed, with an array of large windows looking out over the barren landscape of Tanfana (as if there were anything aesthetically pleasing about it all). On the wall to the right was a poster showing _Fornax's _very first issue, back when it was known by the slightly less reputable name _Xeno-fornication Monthly. _Other items in the office included a painting of a triumphant krogan tearing off a turian's head (which was rather at odds with the rest of the artwork around the building), a large, leather-bound copy of the _Kama Sutra _sitting atop a pedestal, and a T-shirt hanging on the wall that read "Ardat-Yakshi Do It Mind-Blowingly."

Nehalennia was talking with someone over a video link at the moment. "Listen, humans don't go for turian women; the lack of breasts is a rather big turn-off, so forget writing any scenes like that. You could throw in some vorcha for the 'holy crap are you serious?' factor, but dealing with them is always a headache. Oh, and one more thing: quarian women are totally _in_ with human males right now, but here's the thing, _they gotta be in their suits._ Don't know why, guess they're just funny that way." She then glanced up and saw Aethyta standing in the doorway. "Look, I gotta go. We'll talk about this later."

"Well look who's made it big!" said Aethyta, laughing heartily. "Selling smut throughout the galaxy; truly there can be no higher calling for an asari!"

Nehalennia stood up from her desk, revealing that she was clad in a black and red leather catsuit, causing Tali to wonder just what kind of dress code the _Fornax_ headquarters had. "Aethyta! Still not dead yet, I see!"

"No, just ageing disgracefully."

"Ha! Somehow I bet that only says half of it! Who knows what sort of filthy, depraved things you've been getting up to since we last talked? Enough to fill a whole issue of my magazine, that's for sure."

Aethyta looked a bit ashamed for a moment. "Actually, I've been spending most of that time working at a bar on Illium."

Nehalennia's face went blank. "A matriarch, working at a bar? That's...that's a bit of a come down, isn't it?"

"My credibility back on Thessia was all shot to hell, so I figured that barflies might have better ears for my advice than my fellow asari. Pretty sad, isn't it?"

"Indeed, but I take it you're not here for reminiscing, Aethyta. Your message said something about an investigation?"

Garrus stepped forward. "Yes, we're here under the authority of Commander Shepard who, as I'm sure you're aware of, is a Spectre. He'd speak with you himself, but he's a bit...indisposed...right now, and I'm not sure he'd be all that happy coming to the headquarters of a porn mag."

"Please, here at _Fornax_ we prefer the term 'interspecies erotica.' No doubt you've noticed how much hatred there is in the galaxy – humans and batarians at each others' throats, krogans blaming the turians and the salarians for the genophage, and _nobody_ seems to have anything good to say about quarians. We show that, despite their differences, the races of the galaxy can put aside their hatred and share love and intimacy with one another. Is that so wrong?"

Garrus was unable to think of a witty comeback to that. "I...I suppose not..."

"There are some prudish types that call our publication 'filth'," Nehalennia said, "but we do not mean to offend anyone. Although, after that fiasco with the Forbidden Issue, we haven't exactly been welcome in Citadel space."

Aethyta laughed. "After driving your subscribers to madness? Yeah, I can imagine people wouldn't want to see your magazine on store shelves after that."

"You must understand, no one here knew just what effect that scene would have on people. It was the brainchild of Marcus Bumbleson, our first human director. The man was a genius, if a bit odd. He could write and direct scenes that would get anyone hot and bothered no matter what species he or she belonged to, and with him working for us we had more subscribers than at any point in our publication history. One day he comes into my office after spending three days alone in his apartment, telling me that he's conceived the greatest erotic scene of his entire career. It sounded promising, if rather extreme, but the problem was finding an actor willing to do the sort of...things...the scene required. We were at a loss, until a young quarian named Prazza came to us, displaying the perfect mix of stupidity, bravado, and desperation."

Tali looked down. How much longer would Prazza's legacy continue to haunt the galaxy? She bristled at the thought that he was probably the most famous quarian in the galaxy by now, for all the wrong reasons.

Nehalennia continued with her story. "Marcus was overjoyed to have someone willing to perform in the scene, and seeing how proud he was of it, we decided that we would have an exclusive advance screening of that issue to our wealthiest subscribers. It was to be shown on our of our private vessels, whose location was known only to those invited. We first realised that something was wrong when the ship did not return when it was supposed to. We tried reaching the crew on the comm channel, but all we got back was static and some garbled speech. After running the transmission through some audio filters, we determined that the last message from the ship was four words: _save yourself from Prazza._ When we actually located our vessel, we found that everyone on board was dead; at first we thought that they had come under attack by mercs or pirates, but then we saw the ship's log. It was...horrifying. The crew and passengers were killing each other in an insane frenzy, ripping each other to pieces, clawing their own eyes out..."

"Did you know that the scene was responsible?" said Garrus.

"We didn't think that at first, but that's where all the evidence pointed to. Unfortunately the issue with that particular scene had already gone on the market, and it was too late for us to recall it. People throughout the galaxy were driven insane, suffered fatal heart attacks, or killed themselves after seeing it. Even asari matriarchs were rendered comatose for weeks by that scene. Whatever we had unleashed on the galaxy was so offensive, so disgusting, so completely and utterly _wrong_ that peoples' minds couldn't handle it. It goes without saying that the resulting lawsuits nearly bankrupted us. Marcus Bumbleson's career was completely destroyed, and three of the actors featured in that issue later committed suicide. Sadly, we never learned what became of Prazza, who I'm told had performed the most...revolting...acts in the scene."

"He's dead," said Tali. "He was killed on the human colony of Freedom's Progress."

"Oh?" said Nehalennia, raising an eyebrow. "And may I ask how, exactly, he died?"

"A heavy mech killed him with its rocket launcher."

"Hmm, now that's ironic. I believe the title of his particular scene within the Forbidden Issue was 'Ride My Love Rocket'."

"Well that's all very interesting," said Garrus, "but, as for the real reason we're here, do you know anything about the disappearance of a mister Slab Bulkhead? I believe he was in your employ before he vanished."

"Ah yes, Mr. Bulkhead. He was one of our most popular human actors. Very well-endowed and willing to do almost anything on camera, although he was dumber than a lobotomised vorcha. Sometimes he seemed like he would forget to keep breathing unless someone reminded him. As for his disappearance, the last time we saw him was after his latest scene, one that involved him and fifty sex-crazed asari maidens. A pair of quarians came into the building and asked the secretary if they might 'borrow' Mr. Bulkhead for a moment, claiming that they were from a major university and conducting research on 'expressions of male virility across species.' The last we saw of Slab was him getting into an aircar with them."

"You never got the names of these quarians?"

"No, and being quarians we couldn't give you a physical description, either. May I ask what become of Mr. Bulkhead? He was a true asset to our publication and I hate to imagine anything bad befalling him."

Garrus spoke slowly, no doubt recalling the man's horrible fate. "I'm afraid he's dead. Those quarians abducted him and used him for some sadistic experiments."

Her expression turned glum. "Oh goddess, that's terrible! I don't think we'll ever find another human with his...stamina. I...I'm sorry I cannot tell you more."

"We appreciate your cooperation, regardless. The quarians in question also abducted the race car driver Douglas Falkner; we're going to be looking into him next."

"Hmm, I don't follow the Zero-G circuit so I couldn't tell you much about him. I have heard rumours, though, that his reputation as a ladies' man was totally undeserved."

"How so?"

"What I mean is, the man was a virgin. Never even held hands with a woman, from what I've heard. The whole 'Douglas Falkner, Sex God' routine was just an act."

Garrus' mandibles twitched, though out of amusement or confusion, Tali could not tell. "I see. Well, thank you for your cooperation; perhaps we'll find more answers at the track."

As they departed, Nehalennia could not notice how attractive both Garrus and Tali were. The turian's scars would make any human woman swoon with desire, and the quarian's body was the perfect shape to set human men's hearts racing. For a second she considered asking one or both of them to pose for the upcoming issue's centrefold, but decided against it.

* * *

The Tanfana Zero-G circuit was the sole bright spot on the whole blasted planet. The track itself was much too large to be built within City 37, as the high speeds involved necessitated a track that was many kilometres in length. So it was constructed some distance beyond the city, but even then it was easily visible from a distance. Unlike most traditional racetracks, which were mostly two-dimensional, a typical Zero-G track had corkscrews, loops, and sections of the track that ran straight up or down. Many areas had no guardrails, ensuring that any racer who was not skilled enough to keep his machine on the track (or was knocked off by an opponent) would plummet to his fiery death on the ground below. There was no race scheduled for today, much to Tali's disappointment, although she would have been horrified to see how violent the sport had become in recent years. Catastrophic collisions had become so prevalent that many people did not come to see who would win the race, but only for the possibility of seeing a massive fifty-car pileup.

Upon inquiring about Mr. Falkner's disappearance to the track direction, Garrus, Tali, and Aethyta were directed to Falkner's press agent, a turian named Volatus who was found in the paddock, where cars were worked on prior to the race. At the moment Volatus was arguing with a quarian over who was going to take possession of Douglas Falknker's race car, the _Raven's Claw._ And that was what had Tali's undivided attention, to the point where she didn't notice the conversation with the turian and quarian at all. The _Raven's Claw_ was a work of art – a sleek, beautifully-engineered vehicle that was painted such a pure shade of black that it was almost as if light just fell into it. In the rear it was packing four Aerodyne RDX-4500 thrusters, each one capable of producing over one meganewton of thrust, propelling the car to unbelievable speeds. The thrusters were powered by a compact fusion plant custom engineered for this vehicle alone, and there were rumours that it possessed the highest power-to-size ratio of any fusion plant in the galaxy. Whatever power was not being sent to the engines was diverted the car's kinetic barriers, necessary due to the inevitable bumping and jostling that took place between vehicles. Tali could not resist taking a peak into the cockpit, imagining what it would be like to drive this magnificent machine, or at least work on it. Garrus and Aethyta did not share her interest, to say the least, both mystified at how people could be entertained by a bunch of cars going around a track over and over.

She snapped out of her reverie and turned her attention to Volatus and the quarian. "The _Raven's Claw_ was entirely Falkner's possession, and in accordance with his will, it will be given to his next of kin," said Volatus, looking supremely annoyed with the quarian.

The quarian waved his hand. "Bah! And what will they do with it, hmm? I was Falkner's mechanic, and I know this car as well as he did, if not more! I am the only one who will appreciate this beautiful machine!"

"That doesn't matter, Shaar. And what would you do with the _Raven's Claw_ if you had it? Drive it? You'd probably end up as a black scorch mark on the side of the mountain somewhere." He then noticed Tali, Garrus, and Aethyta, which only added to his irritation. "And who are you? Not more people trying to get their filthy hands on Mr. Falkner's machine, I hope!"

"No, we're here to investigate Falkner's disappearance," said Garrus. "We believe a pair of quarians may be involved in his abduction."

"I knew it!" Shaar exclaimed. "There was something funny about those two!"

Volatus glared at the quarian. "Wh...what are you talking about? Do you know something?"

"I...I thought I was just being paranoid! A few weeks ago these two quarians came up to me while I was working on the _Raven's Claw_ and started asking about my work. They said they wanted to show the galaxy that Falkner couldn't win all his races without a quarian working on his car, so I told them everything about what I did, how I spent hours tweaking the thrusters and the fusion plant to squeeze every last bit of performance out of them. But I...I kept getting the feeling they weren't really interested in that."

"And you never thought to tell this to anyone?" Volatus said.

Shaar began pacing about, clearly upset. "Like I said, I didn't think it was important. Then...then they started asking all these weird questions about Falkner, about his intelligence."

That piqued Garrus' interest. "His intelligence?"

"Yeah, like whether the stories about him being a complete moron off the track were true. I told them what I thought – that Falkner might have been a genius behind the wheel, but anywhere else and he couldn't find his ass with both hands. They left after that."

"Do you remember the names of these quarians?"

He shook his head. "No, they never told me. But I sensed that there was something strange about the whole deal, so I followed them out of the paddock and eavesdropped on their conversation. I didn't hear anything important, but one of them called the other 'Hvenna'Tor'. That's all I know, I swear!"

That name was familiar to Tali, but she couldn't remember off the top of her head where she had heard it before. "Are we done here?" said Volatus impatiently. "Mr. Falkner's disappearance made a huge mess and I'm the one stuck cleaning it up! Tell me, is he dead?"

"Yes," Garrus answered, rather reluctantly. "Those quarians who abducted him used in their...experiments, although it was more like torture. We believe they were searching for humans of particularly low intelligence."

"Experiments? What sort of experiments?" said Shaar.

Tali explained it to him, trying to avoid any overly-gruesome description of what they had found at the research base. But all that came out of her mouth was, "They were trying to create a geth/human hybrid," spoken in a total monotone.

Shaar and Volatus looked at each other. "And here I was thinking we were going to find Falkner's nude, lifeless body in a cheap hotel somewhere," said the turian.

With nothing else to be learned here, the three of them left the paddock just as Tali remembered where she had heard the name Hvenna'Tor before. "I...I know that name," she said. "Hvenna'Tor was one of the researchers who worked with my father on the _Alarei._ I remember him from one of the ship's logs."

Garrus stopped in his tracks. "I thought you said there were no survivors from that ship?"

"There weren't or...or at least I thought there weren't. Maybe he left before the geth attacked, or maybe he was in hiding, I...I don't know. We should get back to the _Normandy_ and tell Shepard about this." She did not want to spend another minute on this miserable planet, and thinking back to what had happened on the _Alarei_ had put her in a foul mood. Something told her that deeper they delved into their investigation, the worse things were going to get.

* * *

Back on the _Normandy_,Shepard was using his time off to view the popular romantic film _Fleet and Flotilla._ He could not stop thinking about the meeting with his feminine alter-ego, although he still was not sure if it were really an "extraplanar transfer of consciousness," as she had described, or just a strange dream. Whatever the truth was, he was giving serious though to him and Tali being together for the first since Kelly Chambers had revealed the quarian's affection for him. Before that he had squirrelled away such thoughts into the back of mind, not really wanting to think about that sort of thing.

The film had not impressed him much. It was a fair bit "fluffier" than he had expected, and rather than seriously delve into the issues surrounding interspecies romance it had simply gone for giving the audience a warm and fuzzy feeling. The featured romance wasn't even between a human and quarian. Despite his exhaustive extranet searches, there was very little, if any, information on that kind of relationship, no doubt due to the fact that humanity was a newcomer to the galactic community and that quarians very rarely pursued non-quarian partners. That meant that if he and Tali ever got together, he would quite possibly be breaking new ground in interspecies relationships. Garrus, Tali, and Aethyta returned to the ship a few minutes later, and they met with Shepard in the meeting room. In spite of all their efforts, they hadn't found any more leads in their investigation aside from the name 'Hvenna'Tor.'

"He was one of the researchers on the _Alarei;_ I'm sure of it!" Tali explained. "He survived somehow and now he...he's restarting my father's work!"

"And for all we know he died when the geth overran the research facility," Garrus added. "It's too bad that Geth-Prime-With-Prazza's-Brain-In-It caused the reactor to explode before we could do a proper accounting of casualties."

"Then that's it, then?" Shepard said. "It would seem that our villain has undone himself."

Tali wasn't quite so assured. "I...I don't know, Shepard. We didn't find any ships or shuttles at that facility; some of researchers might have gotten away."

"At any rate, it would seem we've hit a dead-end, unless you know someone back on the flotilla who could help us find this Hvenna'Tor individual."

"I'll send a message to Shala'Raan and Han'Gerrel and see if they know anything, though I'm not sure how much they can say over an open channel."

"Then we'd best get back to our original mission. We've already gotten sidetracked enough times as it is." Shepard still had vivid memories of driving the Mako across the barren surfaces of countless worlds, obsessively hunting down every last bit of wreckage or mineral deposits, often to the exasperation of his crew.

Still sore from his injuries, Shepard returned to his quarters and lay down on the bed. He knew his thoughts should have been on the mission, but all he could think about was how he might broach the topic of a relationship with Tali, if that was even what he truly desired (and he still wasn't quite one hundred percent sure of that, either). How _did_ one go about expressing interest, anyway? Back on the _Normandy SR-1,_ Ashley Williams had made it fairly clear that she had an interest in him, although both of them knew that fraternisation of that kind wasn't the best idea. Sadly, their budding romance had come to a swift and awkward end when Ashley came to his quarters the night before their arrival at Ilos, quoting the poem _O Captain! My Captain!_ Not wanting to give the impression that he was not well-read, Shepard had recited the first few lines of _his_ favourite poem – _Beowulf._ Between trying to translate the lines "Hwæt wē Gārdena in geārdagum þēodcyninga þrym gefrūnon" into modern English and explaining the historical context of the poem, he had more or less killed off the mood of the moment. Their "relationship" had ceased to exist after that, and their "reunion" on Horizon had put the nail firmly in its coffin.

And so Shepard vowed that, if he were going to pursue Tali, that the last thing he would ever do was quote poetry at her.


	10. Love Calls You By Your Name

Chapter 10 – Love Calls You By Your Name

* * *

"Set the neural neutralisation factor to twenty."

Hvenna'Tor was not a religious man – hardly any quarians were – but he was praying that this particular avenue of research would prove fruitful. The Overseer had been extremely displeased with his efforts so far, specifically the death of nearly everyone at their secondary research station, but he insisted that it had not been his fault. The blame lay with the foolish technicians who had "forgotten" to disarm the Geth Prime before activating it. He and his associate Taedal'Rhen had barely escaped with their lives, getting away in a shuttle and leaving the remainder of the research time to die at the hands of the Geth Prime. They deserved nothing less for their stupidity.

Now he and Taedal were back at the primary research base, under the ever-watchful eye the Overseer. It was not so much as base in the traditional sense, but three small vessels of human manufacture, specifically Arcturus Geoscience Inc., whose assets had been liquidated after the company declared bankruptcy. An assault on one of their facilities (whoever was behind it remained a mystery) had devastated the massive mining corporation, and so the Overseer had purchased a number of their ships at a greatly discounted price. These vessels were in orbit near a star that humans called Eta Carinae, which easily masked their ships' emissions. A large array of solar panels extended from the largest of the three ships, providing a limitless source of power. That left food and other supplies, which were simple to obtain with such a small number of researchers.

Their numbers were few for one reason: secrecy. No one in the Migrant Fleet except the Overseer knew about this place, and most quarians would have been aghast if they knew what sorts of things were happening here. Sadly, they would never understand that the work being done here would put the quarian back on the homeworld one day. It was not as though the humans they were using as test subjects were any great loss to the galaxy. Most were mercenaries, criminals, or slaves purchased from batarian raiders. People no one would miss.

In order to integrate the subjects' minds into the geth neutral network, they needed individuals of particularly low intelligence. Merely being ignorant or slow of wit was not enough; they had to be of exceptional stupidity. They had acquired a number of such individuals, but all of them were now dead, victims of their failed experiments. Fortunately, Hvenna'Tor had a fallback plan, or rather, a device. The technical term for it was "neural neutraliser" but everyone called it by its far more sinister name: the Mind Flayer.

What the Mind Flayer did was burn out select portions of the subject's brain, reducing his intelligence dramatically. The main difficulty in using the device was getting subject's intelligence in the "sweet spot" where their brains would be suitable for use in their research, but not destroying their intelligence to the point where they were too stupid to live. Hvenna'Tor had discovered this hard way when he accidentally rendered a test subject so unintelligent that the unfortunate individual had forgotten how to breathe.

The Mind Flayer itself consisted of a chair lined with numerous restraints. A metal dome hung over the head of the subject, and this was responsible for directing tightly-focused beams of radiation into the subject's brain. The dome was connected to a control console where the operators of the Mind Flayer could adjust how much intelligence they wished to drain from the subject. This was far from an exact science, as each individual's brain was unique, so there was always an element of luck to reaching the exact level of stupidity. Hvenna'Tor wished that they still had Prazza's brain, as he possessed a natural lack of intelligence that was exactly what they needed. Since the loss of the secondary research station, they had been trying – so far unsuccessfully – to create another Prazza using the Mind Flayer.

Another test subject, the 37th so far, was now strapped into the Mind Flayer, desperately trying to get free. "No! I don't want to die!" he screamed.

Hvenna'Tor had heard it all before. "Silence, fool! You have no purpose but to be reduced to a gibbering moron by my hand. Activate the Mind Flayer!"

Taedal pushed a few buttons, and the subject's brain was ravaged by high-energy radiation for several seconds. He twitched and convulsed for a moment, then was still.

"_Atlas Shrugged _was awesome! Ayn Rand is a true genius!" the human declared with great pride.

"Hmm, stupid, but not stupid enough. Give him another three seconds."

The subject thrashed about as Taedel activated the Mind Flayer again and yet more of his brain matter was permanently destroyed. When it was finished, the human wore a big, idiotic grin on his face with a bit of drool dribbling down from the side of his mouth.

"Libertarians? How can you go wrong voting for _them?"_

Hvenna'Tor was pleased. "We are almost at the optimum level of stupidity. Give him another half-second."

Taedel complied, and the subject jerked about for the last time. He spoke one word, and one word only:

_ "Derp."_

"Excellent. Send him to the processing facility." This was the most promising experimental subject they had produced so far. With any luck this one would survive integration with the geth neural net, which would go far to get Hvenna'Tor back into the Overseer's favour after the secondary research facility had been destroyed on his watch. Hvenna'Tor knew that, if their work came to fruition, that the Overseer would likely take all the credit for putting the quarian people back on the homeworld. He didn't care one bit for that – it was only vengeance he sought. If they succeeded, they would have complete control of the geth – the race that was feared by the whole galaxy. Then the Council would rue the day they turned on the quarian people, and their entire race would have their long-overdue revenge.

* * *

"Shepard?"

Tali's voice roused him from slumber. He had not intended to fall asleep, but rather he had laid down for a moment's rest and then inadvertently dozed off. His body was still a bit sore from that whole incident with the Geth Prime, and while he was ashamed to admit it, Shepard was glad to have some time off where no one could demand much from him.

He sat up, his head filled with the sort of haziness that made him wonder if he awake or just dreaming. "Oh, hey Tali."

She remained near the lift door. "Oh, I'm sorry for bothering you; I...I can come back later..."

"No no, it's all right. What do you need?" He found himself avoiding looking at her; in fact he was almost a bit nervous being alone with her. That was decidedly unexpected for someone who had faced the things Shepard had faced. Part of the reason for his sudden trepidation was that he was still trying to get his head around the idea that he might ever have a relationship with a non-human. Growing up on various Alliance ships Shepard had never had much exposure to aliens, only learning what most human children learned about them in schools: the asari were the blue-skinned race of hot women, the krogans were the race of bloodthirsty barbarians, the batarians were the four-eyed bastards whose collective ass humanity had kicked, and the quarians were the people who wore environmental suits and that nobody liked. Thinking from the evolutionary perspective, it was a bit odd that members of two different species could find each other attractive

Not that Tali was unattractive – quite the opposite, in fact. She possessed a figure most women would kill for, and she had that ineffable quality of being the sort of person that made you want to give her a hug and tell her that everything would be all right. Not only that, Tali had a youthful exuberance to her that Shepard found charming, and while he wouldn't say that she was naïve (no one could say that about themselves after spending two years with the crew Tali had been forced to work with), there was a certain wide-eyed idealism to her that he found refreshing compared to the cynicism he so often saw in others.

Tali held a rectangular box in her hand. "I...I brought you something," she said meekly. "I wanted to give it you before, but I...I wasn't sure it was the right time."

He took the box from her and smiled when he saw what it was – a model of the _Normandy SR-1._ It was so much like Tali to give him something like this that he could not help but laugh.

"The old _Normandy..._well it guess it really isn't that old, isn't it? But thank you, Tali; I've never had one of my crew give me a present before."

She sat next to him at the side of the bed, reminding Shepard unpleasantly of a moment from his past when a girl had "invited" him to her quarters, obviously seeking an intimate encounter. He hadn't known that at the time, being only a teenager then, and her blatant come-ons had fallen on his deaf, clueless ears.

Tali was clearly nervous, wringing her hands in the way she did whenever she felt anxious. "When I saw it in the store, I knew I had to get it for you, but I...I didn't know if it was...if it was appropriate for me to give my captain I gift so...so..."

"It's a fine gift, Tali, and just what my collection needs." Near the couch was a glass display case that he had filled with ship models, such as a turian frigate, a quarian liveship, the _Destiny Ascension_, and even Sovereign, which looked rather like a de-clawed lobster in its model form. "You know, before you came aboard, I had a chance to visit the wreckage of the original _Normandy."_

"It must have hard for you to see it like that."

The memory of seeing that beautiful ship reduced to a heap of scrap was more painful than he expected. "The Alliance wanted me to recover the dog tags from the crewmen we lost. I thought it would be a simple matter, but seeing the ship I spent months on like that...the pieces of debris just lying in the snow...it was like a punch to the gut. Maybe I'm just sentimental for thinking about a ship that way, I don't know."

Tali edged closer to him. "No, I understand completely. If a quarian were to lose his ship, it would be like losing a part of yourself."

Like him she had spent almost all her life aboard ships, never knowing what it was like to have a home planetside. Maybe that was why Shepard always felt a connection with Tali – they were both spacers who had grown up knowing that death was only a hull breach away. But that was not to say that their lives were entirely alike. His race, at least, had a homeworld they could return to, while quarians had no such option.

"Did I ever tell you about the first ship I lived on?" he said, standing up and walking over to the hamster cage.

"No, I don't think you ever did."

"It was a small ship – only a frigate – named the _Hattin_. If I were to start waxing nostalgic I might say it was a good ship, but it was anything but. Not a day went past that something wasn't breaking down or failing, and I swear the whole ship needed fifty hours of maintenance for every hour it was operating. Everyone on board, even those who weren't with the Alliance, had to pitch in just to keep things running."

Tali stood up and walked over to him, looking rather interested in the hamster. "That sounds a lot like a typical quarian ship."

"Maybe, but I could never understand why the Alliance kept such a lemon of a ship in its fleet. But you know what the weird thing is, Tali? The first _Normandy_ was vastly superior in every way, and this ship is even better than that. But sometimes, I would give almost anything just to have one more day aboard the _Hattin."_

"It sounds like it had a lot of character."

"Yes, that it did." He saw that Harvey's food tray was nearly empty, so he looked around the cabin for the box of alfalfa pellets. While he was doing this Tali stared into the hamster cage with a mixture of curiosity and bewilderment that Shepard would keep this strange-looking creature as a pet.

"What is this animal?" she asked, tilting her head to look through the glass.

"A hamster. They're not exactly exotic, you know."

Harvey looked rather at ease with Tali's presence, although Shepard could not possibly know the true reason for this. No one would ever suspect it, but all hamsters shared an ancestral memory across space, time, and parallel universes, and somehow Harvey knew that Tali was someone he could trust. Perhaps quarians and hamsters coexisted in some alternate universe, or maybe Tali was the reincarnation of someone who had been a friend of space hamsters.

"It looks like Chiktikka, although not as big."

Shepard paused. "Like what now?"

"Chiktikka vas Paus. They were entrainment vids for children on the flotilla. Chiktikka was a talking _thvota,_ a kind of small furry animal that's native to the homeworld."

"Let me guess – quarians kept them as pets?"

"No, in fact, they were often treated with reverence. In our ancient mythology, Chiktikka was the name of the companion of Bekka, the quarian god of liquor and drunkenness."

Harvey squeaked in delight as Shepard dumped the alfalfa pellets into his food tray. "Somehow I don't think you came here to talk about quarian religion."

"No, I didn't," she said quietly. It was evident that Tali was extremely nervous, fidgeting about and trying to avoid his gaze. "When the _Normandy _was destroyed I lost the ship I loved, and my captain. In the two years after that I lost my friends on Haestrom and my father on the _Alarei._ Two days ago I nearly lost you again. I...I don't think I could bear to...to..."

He knew that Tali was terrified of being alone, a state particularly anathema to such a tight-knit species as quarians. "You're among friends here, Tali. No one's backing out now."

"I...I know, and there's nowhere else in the galaxy I'd rather be." She took one step towards him, and he could easily tell what she so desperately wanted to say, but was unable to find the words to express it. The problem was that Shepard couldn't find the words either, and if neither of them said anything then they would just end up staring at each other awkwardly until things reached a critical mass of awkwardness.

Either out of instinct or desperation to do something, _anything_, he took her hands into his, which felt a bit strange as Tali's hands had two fewer fingers than his. "You don't have to be coy with me, Tali. I understand how you feel."

"Y...you do?"

"If I might be brutally honest, I heard it first from Yeoman Chambers. Then from Aethyta. And if I hadn't heard it from them, Garrus probably would have told me, and if not him...well...I think the entire ship probably knows by this point."

She took a step. "O...oh, I...I'm sorry. This...this is so embarrassing..." Shepard knew that underneath her helmet Tali's face was probably turning a deep shade of red. "So you...you're not...interested?  
He smiled at her. "I never said I wasn't."

"Really? But you...you never...what I mean is...I never thought..."

If Shepard were the leading man in one of those romance vids he never really enjoyed, then he would probably end her excited babbling with a sudden, unexpected kiss. That was not possible, given the presence of Tali's helmet, and the fact that a kiss might cause her to experience a rather severe infection. Was he being unreasonable in choosing a partner for whom even the most basic gestures of affection could be deadly? He thought of the words "love conquers all," although he was not convinced that it wasn't some sappy romantic platitude that was ultimately meaningless.

Tali quickly regained her composure. "But there's more important things than what I want, Shepard. I could get sick, put the mission at risk...I could never forgive myself if that happened."

"Get sick? Tali, I'm not asking that you...you..." He was struck by a sudden feeling of bashfulness, unable to find words to describe being intimate with her.

"I want you see what's behind this helmet...I want you to see my face. Is...is that wrong, Shepard? Is it...selfish...of me to want that?"

"No, Tali, it's not." He was about to say that it was a human thing to desire before he remembered that she was not, in fact, human. "I know you're worried, and I know that I could probably find someone closer to home. But I don't want anyone else. I want you."

She moved closer to him. "Oh, I...I don't know what to say, but...thank you. Give me some time; there are...things...I can research. I'm sure you don't want to know the details."

For a second Shepard wondered if he were dreaming, for everything certainly felt dream-like all of a sudden. "Take as long as you need; I'll be waiting."

"I will, Shepard," she said softly. "And, there is something else. You know the quarian we were investigating, Hvenna'Tor?"

Part of him was relieved to be getting back to business after all this talk of "feelings." "You've found something?"

"I spoke with admiral Shala, who told me that Hvenna'Tor was an biotechnology researcher on board the _Moreh, _who was banished for conducting rather...gruesome...experiments on living subjects."

He paused. "_Moreh..._why does that name sound familiar?"

"It's admiral Daro'Xen's ship; she was one of those at my hearing, remember?"

"How could I forgot? She seemed a bit...creepy." That was an understatement, as just a few days after Tali's trial the admiral had sent him a message boasting about how she was going to regain control of the geth – the "largest synthetic army in the galaxy." "Do you think she's involved in all this?"

"I...I don't know, it wouldn't surprise me. She _did_ say that she was very interested in my father's work; maybe this is all her way of carrying it on."

"The admiralty board was willing to exile on the _possibility_ that you were helping your father with his work. Surely they'd never stand for one of their own doing such things?"

Tali began pacing about, clearly distraught. "They wouldn't, but we have no proof. It'd be like how you tried to prove Saren's guilt to the Council after the attack on Eden Prime."

"Ugh, don't remind me." he said, thinking back to that unpleasant time. "I'm glad they reinstated my Spectre status without demanding that I report to those ingrate councillors. Actually, I suppose the salarian and the asari councillor aren't that bad, it's just the turian who has a stick up his ass."

Joker spoke over the intercom, interrupting their conversation. "Uh, commander, a Blue Suns ship just pulled into orbit around Tanfana, and they're demanding to speak with you. Wouldn't say what they want."

He frowned. "Blue Suns? I guess I'd better go see what this is all about."

Shepard headed up to the cockpit while Tali returned to engineering, a little more spring in her step than usual. Up front, Shepard could barely make out the Blue Suns ship, being merely a speck in the cockpit window.

A nervous voice came over the comm channel. "Uh, hello? Can you hear me?"

"We hear you," Shepard replied. "Are you in need of assistance?"

"Um...yes, I am, actually. I'm wondering, have you seen a ship called the _Normandy_ around here? I heard they were in this system, but I've been looking forever with no luck at all!"

He and Joker exchanged puzzled glances. "And why are you looking for this ship?" Shepard asked.

"Oh, well, there's this guy named Shepard see, and I'm supposed to find him and kill him. The _Normandy's_ his ship, or so they tell me."

It was clear that this particular mercenary wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. "And why do you want to kill this particular individual?"

The merc was only too happy to fill him in. "My employer says that this Shepard guy is getting a little too close to his secret project, so he has to die. I got no quarrel with him, myself, but I got to make a living somehow, right?"

"And who is this employer of yours, anyway?"

"Someone quarian with a stuffy accent. Never game me his name."

"Well I'm afraid that I haven't seen this 'Shepard' person you're after, but I did hear that he was on his way to the Far Rim," he said, giving the mercenary the place in the galaxy that was the absolute farthest from their current position.

"Oh, thanks for pointing me in the right direction! Guess I'll be off, then!"

The comm channel closed and the Blue Suns ship sped off towards the system's mass relay, leaving Joker shaking his head. "You know, if he had gotten close enough, he could just _read_ the name of our ship painted on the hull."

"Be thankful for stupid mercs, then," Shepard said. "God knows we've encountered enough of them."

* * *

Down in engineering, Tali was finding it difficult to concentrate on her work, for obvious reasons. She couldn't believe her good fortune; that Shepard had actually returned the feelings she'd harboured for him. For so long those feelings had filled her with a mixture of doubt and shame, thinking herself foolish and selfish for desiring her commander in such a way. Her old crew had mocked her constantly for her feelings, calling her a 'pervert' and a 'race traitor.' In spite of these hurtful comments her feelings never wavered, and when Shepard had miraculously returned from the dead it was like getting a second chance, albeit a slight one.

Still, Tali was far from being sure of herself in all this. She had never been with a man before and had no idea what to expect. She was not so naïve as to think that her own people would accept her being with a human – they would wonder what sort of future their relationship would have, especially considering that they could never have children. But Tali was getting much too far ahead of herself. For now, she was happy that she had gotten her feelings out in the open (sort of), and had done so in a way that involved very little drama – no anguished declarations of love, no maudlin promises of undying love.

Trying her best not to get distracted from her duties, Tali made her way down to the engineering subdeck. A power coupling had been blown during another round of Garrus' "calibrations" and needed replacing, and while she considered going up to the main battery and admonishing him for it, the turian would likely blow more power couplings just to annoy her. Once she had found the burnt-out coupling she quietly got to work replacing it, trying not to notice the sole denizen of this part of the ship: Jack. Few people ever came down here, and she was the reason. Tali had never spoken with the woman, and she doubted that Jack even acknowledged her existence, but she knew enough to tread lightly when she was around. At the very least, Jack served as a reminder of just what Cerberus was capable of. She hoped that Shepard's association with them came to an end sooner than later, but that was unlikely, much to her dismay.

When her shift was at end she took the lift up to the crew deck, thinking that she might get herself a drink in celebration. Somehow Aethyta knew what had happened between her and Shepard despite the fact that neither of them had told anyone about it. Predictably, the matriarch had inflated what had been a simple talk into a steamy, passionate encounter, forgetting that quarians weren't able to act on their whims like that.

"A drink on the house!" Aethyta declared before Tali could say a word. "Congratulations! You've seduced the first human Spectre! There's got to be a medal for that sort of thing."

Tali was taken aback. "Wh...what?"

"I saw from the way you were strutting about that you were obviously pleased about something. After a thousand years you notice these sorts of things. I thought 'what could have happened to make her happy?' And the only thing I could think of was that you and Shepard were 'replacing spent fuel rods.' You know, pulling your ships into port, discovering the secrets of each others' universes, checking his hull for fractures, making hot, sweaty love to each other for hours on end..." She froze when she realised what she had just said. "Wait, that last one wasn't a euphemism..."

There was a time when she would have become offended at this sort of thing, but it was to be expected from Aethyta. "Nothing like that happened. We just talked."

She looked disappointed. "Sometimes I forgot you aliens aren't as _liberated_ as we asari. When we find someone we want, we just take em' round the nearest corner and, well, you know. So you didn't even...um...cuddle?"

"No."

Aethyta shrugged. "Oh well, I'm just saying that if you were an asari, you would have bedded him at least two dozen times already, then moved on to someone new." She began pouring Tali her drink, a bright green liquid. "Humans call this 'Asari Absinthe', which I guess is appropriate. Just watch out – it's a bit strong in its flavour."

The matriarch wasn't kidding. When the drink passed through her mask's filters and into her lips, Tali was smacked upside the head with flavour of incredible magnitude, something that tasted like absolutely everything at once, all assaulting her taste buds in a brutal onslaught. She staggered back from the counter, nearly falling over, wondering what hit her. Her head swam and she was seeing stars, but eventually she regained her wits.

Aethyta just laughed. "Well done! Last bloke I gave that stuff to got knocked out for three days. Now that you've had that, I think you should have something a little closer to home." She reached underneath the counter and took out a bottle that was made from black glass that was completely opaque and bore a label with writing in the quarian language. "This...I'm not sure what it is exactly, but I originally got on Rannoch."

Tali froze at the mere mention of the homeworld – it was extremely uncommon for quarians to refer to it by its proper name. "You...you were on the homeworld? What was it like?" All Tali knew were stories handed down through generations – stories of great cities, of vast, sweeping plains, of the great seasonal changes brought about the planet's high axial tilt. She had never met anyone who had actually been on the homeworld, as only asari and krogan had lifespans long enough to have gone there before the quarians fled.

"Windy as hell," said Aethyta. "Near the equator there are these great plains where the wind blows hard enough to knock on your ass if you get caught outside. Up north it gets cold enough to freeze the tits off a krogan female, and that's during the summer. Don't even want to think about what it's like during the winter."

She tried to picture what it would be like, but all she felt was anger at the thought of their homeworld being pawed over by the cursed geth. Like all quarians she hoped to see the homeworld with her own eyes one day, but that's all it was: hope. Every so often an admiral or other high-ranking individual would loudly proclaim that they were going to drive out the geth and reclaim the homeworld once and for all, and every time their promise would turn out to be hollow. Her father had promised to build her a house on the homeworld, and what had that gotten him in the end?

This was not the time to be thinking such unhappy thoughts, however. She examined the bottle of liquor closely, noting that it was covered in dust. Would it still be good after more than three centuries?

"You shouldn't open here," Aethyta said. "You should save it for a special occasion; maybe you should share it with Shepard? There's nothing in there that would kill him...I think."

According the label, this particular drink was called _Yxe,_ a word in the quarian language that could not be easily translated to any other language, but meant roughly: "the feeling one gets after becoming sufficiently drunk yet not enough to become sick or pass out, and one is in the company of friends who are of roughly equal drunkenness, and one is inspired to do things that one may later regret but which, at some point in the future, one will look back upon with fondness in a sort of 'didn't we have fun?' way." Unsurprisingly, the quarian language has a dozen words to describe various levels of intoxication, ranging from "mildly tipsy" to "he's going to die of alcohol poisoning, get a medic!"

When Tali retired to the crew quarters, she began her "research," making sure that no one else was looking at what she was reading on her omni-tool. All she wanted was a way, any way, that she might show her face to Shepard, or more of herself, if that were possible.

It wasn't as difficult as she imagined.

So long as the environment were relatively sterile and both individuals took proper precautions then it was possible, theoretically, that a quarian could experience physical contact with a non-quarian and be reasonably safe from any severe infection. But no matter how many precautions she took, there was always a chance, albeit a slight one, of dying horribly of some illness. That was a risk even between quarians who wished to be intimate with one another. The question is, would it be worth it the risk? A part of was begging and pleading "yes!" while the other, more pragmatic side of her was telling her this was foolish. She needed more time to think this through.

* * *

"You sent an assassin after Shepard? Explain yourself, Hvenna!"

The Overseer never bothered to speak with him or any other researcher at the station in person, and when she did communicate it was through an audio channel only. That was fine by Hvenna'Tor, who despised the Overseer for everything except her ultimate goal of taking control of the geth. The woman had some sick fetish for human men; how she had acquired said fetish was something Hvenna'Tor did not care to know. What sort of depraved person preferred aliens over her own kind? He had seen her quarters a few years ago, before this research station had been built, and on her terminal was some extranet site filled with human pornography that she had mistakenly left open. Hvenna was disgusted at the sight and would have taken her to task for it had his status on the Migrant Fleet not been so tenuous. He had been exiled, a result of some high-handed admirals who didn't understand that sometimes sacrifices were necessary if they wanted to have the homeworld back within their lifetimes, and if that meant experimenting on some pirates or mercenaries that the galaxy would be better off without, then that what was what he had to do.

"Shepard was getting too close. He already located our secondary research base and it wouldn't surprise me if he's aware of this facility as well. I did what I had to do."

That did not placate her one bit. "Shepard is not to be touched, understand? No, I think it is only _I_ that shall be doing the 'touching.' Fortunately for you, the mercenaries you hired to kill him turned out to be incompetent. You didn't not think that I am not keeping an eye on you? Need I remind you, Hvenna'Tor, that it was only I who realised your potential and saved you from exile?"

He knew what she was trying to do, and it was working, much to his disgust. She knew that it was only through her that Hvenna was allowed to have anything to do with the Migrant Fleet at all. "Very well, but Shepard is a threat that must be dealt with. You know what happened the last time he was allowed to meddle in the affairs of the Migrant Fleet – vital research was lost of which we've only managed to recover but a fraction!"

"Rael'Zorah's work was inconsequential; a mere stepping stone to something far greater. And I assure you Shepard will come to understand what we are doing here. I can be very persuasive when I need to be, and my analysis of his psychological profile makes it clear that he is very susceptible to the charms of quarian females." Without a word more she closed to channel, much to Hvenna's relief.

_"Susceptible to the charms of quarian females"...what complete and utter rot,_ he thought to himself. No human would ever desire a quarian woman; that was absurd. But there were more important things at hand than the Overseer's bizarre fetishes. The latest test subject to have been run through the Mind Flayer was now connected to the testing apparatus. He stood bound to a metal frame and drugged to the point where only basal brain functions remained active. Connected directly to the subject's brain was an antenna taken from a geth platform, a piece of hardware that the geth used to communicate through their neural net. Surrounding the test subject were seven inactive geth (recovered at great cost), all disarmed of course, waiting to be commanded.

The way it worked was relatively simple. The geth would be powered up, and they would immediately attempt to connect with the geth neural net. But since the facility was located next to a hypergiant star, any outgoing transmissions would be lost in the star's intense radiation emission. The geth platforms would have no alternative but to establish an uplink with the test subject, who had been specifically set up to mimic an active geth platform. They would find themselves confronted with an organic, and judging by the results of Project Overload, the geth would regard this fusion of the organic and synthetic as a sort of figurehead. At least that was the hope; the project had so far had no successes whatsoever – just getting a test subject's intelligence down the required level necessitated a great deal of trial and error. Hvenna'Tor was confident, however, that they were nearing a breakthrough. They were still some ways away from gaining complete control over the geth, but nothing great was ever accomplished all in one day.

"Active the geth," he said flatly, his eyes focused on the seven inactive platforms. Once they were switched on commands would be sent through the test subject's brain to the platforms, and then they would find out if all their work had paid off.

Taedal entered the required commands into his omni-tool, and the seven geth began their start-up routines. The lights on their optics units flicked on and they all simultaneously looked up a the test subject in the middle of the chamber. That was a promising sign, one that filled Hvenna'Tor with anticipation. In other trials the geth had either ignored the test subject completely or tried to kill it, although with their weapons removed they naturally had no success.

He could not help but admire the geth; they remained a truly magnificent creation in spite of all the grief and pain they had inflicted on the quarian people. No other race could have created something like them; how many other species in the galaxy could honestly claim to have created life, albeit synthetic life? And for all their great accomplishments the quarians were rewarded by becoming pariahs. But if this project came to fruition, then they would have an army of synthetics numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Then the quarian race would not only be respected, but _feared._

Taedal was busily queuing up commands to be routed through the test subject's brain. The restraints holding the geth platforms in place were released, allowing them to move freely within the test chamber. Having received no commands, the seven platforms stood motionless.

"I am ordering the geth to take one step forward," Taedal said.

A second later, each platform stepped forward, exactly as commanded. "Now I am ordering them to turn 360 degrees to the right."

Once again, the geth complied, turning themselves around in a complete circle. "This is most pleasing," said Hvenna. "I dare say this has been the most successful experiment since we began."

His moment of pride was cut short by a loud beeping coming from a nearby console. Before either of them could ascertain what it was, the test subject's head spontaneously exploded.

"What the hell happened?" Hvenna'Tor shouted, staring in dismay at the pieces of brain and skull now covering the inside of the test chamber.

Taedal frantically looked over the readouts on the console. "I...I don't know! Apparently there was surge in intracranial pressure shortly after the connection to the geth was established."

"Do we need to further reduce the intelligence of the test subjects?"

"I...I can't say. We'll need to do more tests, that's for certain."

Still, in spite of his disappointment, Hvenna'Tor had to acknowledge that they had gotten further with this test than during any other. He had every reason to believe that this exploding head issue would resolved quickly, as there were no shortage of test subjects. Humans had the wonderfully convenient tendency to settle on worlds with no government oversight, and the animosity between them and the batarians meant that any batarian slavers always had a supply of fresh human slaves.

Taedal looked at the bloody mess inside the test chamber. "I suppose I'm going to have to clean this up, am I? Lovely."

* * *

Before Shepard went to bed that night he began reading through an extranet article titled _Dos and Don'ts of Interspecies Relationships. _He didn't think that he needed such advice, given the rather low-key nature of his relationship with Tali, but it never hurt to look these things up, especially when he had little experience in long-term commitments. Then again, if this truly were a suicide mission then their relationship could hardly be described as "long-term" - not that Shepard really wanted to think about that right now.

Unfortunately, the article itself had a tendency to state the obvious, with such bits of advice as:

_DO make an effort to understand her culture._

_ DON'T begin every single question with "why do you people...?"_

_ DO make your intentions clear when meeting her family. Reassure them that you respect your partner and her family's values and beliefs, even if you do not share them._

_ DON'T boast to her family about how you're going to be "tapping that alien ass."_

_ DO make it clear to your partner that you love her for her, and not for her race._

_ DON'T exclaim to your partner, "Last week I dated a krogan, and the week before that an asari, and a week before that a turian," etc._

_ DO discuss adoption if you and your partner desire children._

_ DON'T create an unholy mutant abomination in a laboratory from both you and your partner's DNA._

_ DO find unique ways of expressing your affection for your partner in ways that combine both of your cultures._

_ DON'T express your affection by calling her a bucket-head, tentacle-head, cuttlebone, four-eyes, etc._

_ DO attempt to find ways to share intimacy that do not endanger either you or your partner._

_ DON'T attempt the "Krogan Piledriver" if you yourself are not a krogan._

_ DO make an effort to learn the language of her people._

_ DON'T just learn all the naughty words._

He heard the door opening just as he finished reading the article. Tali walked into the room carrying a bottle in her hands. He instantly knew that he and Tali were going to be drinking what ever was in that bottle, that both of them would likely being getting rather intoxicated, and there was a good chance that they might end up doing something they'd later regret.

"Oh, hey Tali. Is that another present for me?"

"I...I was talking to matriarch Aethyta, and she said I should share this with you." That was all the proof Shepard needed that this drink was going to be something exceptionally strong. "It's quarian liquor from the homeworld, over three centuries old."

That was enough to give him pause. "Quarian liquor, huh? Are you sure this isn't going to kill me?"

"Aethyta said it wouldn't."

"That's not particularly...reassuring...but I guess the woman knows her booze." He switched off his private terminal and looked around his quarters for a pair of glasses. After finding them he took the bottle from her and examined the label, which he naturally couldn't understand. Still, there was an odd sense of foreboding about the bottle, as if what was contained therein was something a little more potent than your average liquor. It was covered in dust, having been in storage for over 300 years.

"I wonder if it's still good after all this time?" said Tali.

"Only one way to find out!"

He set the bottle on the table and slowly began unscrewing the cap, all the while Tali looked on with great curiosity. As soon the cap was off a strange odour wafted out of the bottle, smelling like nothing Shepard had ever encountered before. It was not an unpleasant aroma, quite the opposite in fact, but exceedingly strange nonetheless. He began pouring it into one of the glasses, only to find that the liquor was pure black in colour. It was not even a shiny black, instead being consummate darkness in liquid form. So black, Shepard thought, that black holes had nothing on this.

"Um...is it supposed to look like that?"

Tali shrugged. "I don't know. We know little of our culture from the homeworld, least of all what we ate and drank."

A voice in the back of his mind told him that drinking this mysterious substance might not be the best idea, but he ignored it. "We do this together, on three."

They both took a glass, and on the count of three they both took a shot of the drink. Shepard expected something incredibly potent, only to find that it had very little flavour. At first he was disappointed, but then he began to notice a subtle flavour emerging. It was not something he could easily describe in words – it was both sweet and bitter at the same, was both smooth and biting, and both was warming and cooling on the way down. The more he thought about, the more this drink became the most perfect concoction he had ever tasted. So perfect that he for a moment he felt as if he were phasing out of existence and into a realm of pure sensory ecstasy. A voice called out to him, saying, "You're the man now, Shepard! Go take that quarian and snuggle her brains out!"

A second later he snapped back to reality. "That was...interesting, to put it mildly. How was it for you?"

"It tasted like...like..." She was obviously unable put her feelings into words, as he was. "It tastes like...itself."

He took another sip, which was even better than the first. Tali did the same, and before they knew it they had polished off the entire bottle without saying a word to each other. Unfortunately both of them had underestimated just how drunk this particular liquor would get them. Being a quarian, Tali could imbibe far greater quantities of alcohol than a typical human, but with his cybernetic enhancements Shepard could match her alcohol tolerance. As a result, both of them were now equally drunk.

Tali sat perfectly still, staring at him. "Shepard, I...I appear to be having some trouble...focusing my eyes on you. And I have a strange desire to talk with your hamster, as if it would talk back to me..."

"You can try, but if he speaks to you, then you know you've had enough."

Shepard had gotten drunk enough times in his life that he could get up and walk about with no trouble, but Tali was lacking in "intoxication experience" and nearly fell on her face before Shepard caught her in his arms.

"Oh Shepard, I...I'm having such strange thoughts...I want to take the _Normandy's _engines and...and increase their power output until they...they rip holes in the spacetime continuum...then I want to take the ship and go so fast we fly around the universe and come back to where we started." She stepped back and shook her head. "Wait, I...I've got it! It's all so clear now!"

He grabbed Tali by her shoulders. "What's all clear now?"

"The engines! I've been working on some tweaks to increase their performance for the past few days, but...but now I've got something that should quadruple the output of the _Normandy's_ engines!" She brought up her omni-tool and began working furiously. "If I adjust the tuning on the plasma manifolds, recalibrate the drive core's magnetic constrictors...it should...it should work!"

It was strange that when she got drunk, the first thing Tali thought about was engines. _That's so like her,_ he thought.

She stared at the omni-tool's readout, which to Shepard's eyes was an incomprehensible mass of figures, equations, and technical schematics. "You've had a lot to drink; is this really the time to coming up with plans to modify the ship's engines? How do you know they won't cause everything to blow up?"

"But I can see it, Shepard! It's...it's so perfect...but maybe...maybe you're right. Maybe I should sleep on it."

He took his hands into hers. "You can sleep here tonight, if you want." Was that the right thing to say? Was he being too forward?

"Yes, I'd like that."

For a split second, Shepard had a terrifying feeling that matriarch Aethyta was listening in on them and thinking all sorts of lascivious thoughts. He pushed such silly thoughts from his head and flopped down on his bed. There was something in that quarian liquor that had got him drunk, but in a way that gave him a certain clarity of thought that was difficult to describe. Unfortunately that was probably the only bottle of that particular liquor that he would ever get the chance to drink, unless he used the _Normandy_ stealth systems to make a booze run on the quarian homeworld.

He stared up at the stars through the ceiling window (a rather nice touch by the Cerberus engineers), and he kept staring even as Tali lay down next to him. Maybe it was just him being drunk (and it _had_ to be, in all likelihood) but the more he gazed off into space the more Shepard felt like he was edging ever closer to total objective understanding of the universe, and part of that was realising that the universe may have had it in for Tali, it was going to let her have this moment of happiness, at least.

She put her arm around him and moved closer. It felt a bit strange being near to her like this – all he felt was the rubbery texture of her environment and the hard plastic of her mask pressing against the side of his face. What would it be like to feel her skin against his? He hoped that he would find out before they all flew off into the eye of the storm.

"I wonder if I'm going to wake up with a throbbing headache tomorrow?"

Tali didn't answer, and when he glanced over at her he saw that she was already asleep. More importantly, she had taken a very tight hold on him, almost nearing a death grip in its strength. Hadn't Aethyta warned him about this very thing? For a second he worried that Tali might end up constricting his breathing and suffocating him while he slept, but Shepard reassured himself that, all things considered, being cuddled to death wasn't a bad way to go.


	11. The Quarian Party Boat

_Apparently this site doesn't like huge words, so the name of Kaski's ship was deleted, leaving only a blank where it should have been. I'm guessing this is some sort of anti-spam feature. Nonethless I've found a way around it and this chapter should read correctly now._

_*It also doesn't like me writing out this site's web address, either, since it replaced THAT with a blank, too. Damn it.  
_

_Also, after my first attempt at writing a Baldur's Gate story fizzled out (due to the fact that no one read it), I've begun a second attempt. You can find it here: .net/s/6849127/1/Baldurs_Gate_The_Saga_of_Kjartan_the_Reckoner _

* * *

Chapter 11 – The Quarian Party Boat

* * *

In the Hawking Eta sector of the Milky Way galaxy was a substellar object named Mnemosyne, more specifically, a brown dwarf. A brown dwarf was, essentially, a star that didn't quite make it – a gas giant that didn't possess sufficient mass to begin hydrogen fusion in its core. Other names for a brown dwarf included "failed star," "sub-star," or "the little star that couldn't."

This particular brown dwarf would normally have been of no interest to anyone, except for a strange gravitic anomaly in the northern hemisphere. A peculiar low-mass "bubble" that did not move with the intense winds was discovered, and while no formal investigation of this anomaly was ever conducted, Cerberus later learned that it was something far more ominous: a 37 million year-old derelict Reaper. Predictably, they sent a ship to investigate the "dead" Reaper, only to realise that, in their enthusiasm, that the ship they had sent was not sufficiently strengthened against the high-pressure atmosphere. It soon imploded after reaching the dead Reaper, with the loss of all hands aboard. As a result, several Cerberus employees were "disappeared" for their incompetence.

Undeterred, Cerberus sent another ship, this one properly outfitted for high-pressure atmospheres. Unfortunately the ship's pilot, in his enthusiasm to see a "real Reaper up close" failed to watch where he was going and slammed the ship full-speed into the Reaper, once again resulting the loss of all hands on board. As before, many Cerberus employees were "disappeared" as punishment for the fiasco. A third ship was sent, this time with a competent pilot at the helm. However, the ship's navigator happened to be incompetent, and sent them to the opposite end of the galaxy and into the all-devouring maw of a black hole with the loss of all hands. This time no Cerberus employees were "disappeared," as the organisation was running frightfully low on members. A forth and final ship was dispatched, which successfully docked with the derelict Reaper and established a research outpost there.

Of course, no one realised that the Reaper's indoctrination field was still active, and so the entire research ended up transformed into husks. But one had to admit that, by Cerberus' exceedingly low standards, that this constituted a "success." And not only that, the team had learned that a particular Identify Friend/Foe transceiver on board the Reaper would allow passage through the Omega-4 relay. Normally this information would have been relayed promptly the Illusive Man, but his secretary bore a deep grudge against the man and was surreptitiously deleting any messages sent to his office at random. So it would be some time yet before Shepard ever learned the derelict Reaper, which was prove fortuitous. When he came to investigate the Reaper, he would be doing so at the same as a certain geth platform, one entirely unlike anything he had ever encountered before.

* * *

When Tali awoke, she was not entirely sure if she were not, in fact, still dreaming. She held tightly to Shepard, still not quite believing that this was really happening. Hadn't all her dreams been something like this? Only this time Tali was still in her suit, which meant it was probably _not_ a dream. And that was what frustrated her so much. Even now, when she was close to him, she wasn't _really_ close to him. She couldn't touch him with her bare hands, and proper nuzzling was out of the question with this helmet over her head.

Shepard was strong enough to free himself from her grasp, avoiding a terrible cuddly death for one night, at least. When she got out of the bed she tried to remember what had happened the night before, but everything was a haze. They had drunk that bottle of quarian liquor, no doubt becoming extremely intoxicated, but neither of them were suffering anything like a hangover, likely due to some long-forgotten brewing technique from the homeworld. Tali remembered that she had come up with some modifications for the _Normandy's_ engines in the middle of her drunkenness, but could not for the life of her remember what they were. She brought it up on her omni-tool and found the plans, only to realise that they were utterly incomprehensible.

"What...what is this?" she wondered aloud. "Did I come up with this?"

"Yeah, you were really excited about it last night," said Shepard. "Said it was going to quadruple the power output of the ship's engines."

Tali looked over the confusing mess of equations, schematics, and other things she did not recognise. Nothing in all her engineering expertise could make any sense of it whatsoever, and everything she knew about engines was telling her that none of it would do anything except cause the the drive core to explode. "I'm not going to be making any of _these_ modifications, that's for sure. I can't believe I came up with this! It's nonsense!"

Shepard just shrugged. "Well you wouldn't be the first person to think up something stupid while drunk. Just be glad you're smart enough not to act on it."

For a second Tali considered deleting her plans from the omni-tool, but at the last second she decided to keep them on the off-chance that she might comprehend them someday. "I...I'm not sure I'm going to be doing that again, Shepard. I feel a bit guilty for drinking that homeworld liquor, like I'm not worthy of it."

"It's not as if it was doing anything sitting in a cabinet somewhere. And we had a good time, didn't we? " He then took her hands into his and gave a knowing smile. "You know, you're more than welcome if you want to spend the night here instead of down on the crew deck."

Tali felt her face flush. "Oh Shepard, that...that would be nice but...they'll say things about us, won't they? The crew, I mean. I don't want them to think that I'm being treated differently just because you and I are...well...together."

"I think they know about us already; Aethyta's probably spread the word to the entire ship. But you're right, we shouldn't go rubbing it in peoples' faces."

Was it normal for human captains to pursue relationships with their crew like this? On a quarian ship it was inevitable, since most of them spent their lives on starships, but things worked differently among other races. Tali reminded herself that Shepard wasn't part of the Alliance any longer, nor was he was part of Cerberus. Technically, he didn't have to follow _any_ regulation if he didn't want to.

Whatever mood was developing between them was shattered by Joker, speaking over the intercom. "Uh, commander? I've got someone from the Migrant Fleet on the comm – he says he wants to speak with you."

"I'll be right down."

That piqued Tali's interest. "This must have something to do with our investigation."

Shepard took the lift down the the deck below, while Tali waited a few minutes before doing the same so that people wouldn't see them exiting the lift together. It wasn't really necessary for her to do this; nearly everyone on the _Normandy_ knew that their captain and their chief engineer had a thing for each other, but Tali wasn't about to make it obvious, regardless.

When she reached the cockpit she heard the voice of some quarian. "...in your investigation, commander. Someone on the flotilla is continuing Rael'Zorah's work; I cannot say more than that on an open comm channel. I'm sending you the coordinates where you'll find my private yacht. We'll talk there." Whoever this quarian was, he spoke in such a ridiculously affected accent that he made Zaal'Koris sound positively meek by comparison.

And a "private yacht?"Tali had never heard of anyone on the flotilla possessing something like that. "Who was that?" she asked.

"He called himself 'Admiral Kaski'Fjal vas Bababadalgharagh-takamminarronnkonn-bronntonnerronntuonn-thunntrovarrhounawnska-wntoohoohoordenenthurnuk'," said Shepard, somehow managing to pronounce the ship's name in its ludicrous entirety.

Tali knew of that ship, as it was one of the more infamous vessels on the flotilla. Its name was supposed to be an onomatopoeic representation of the sound of a drive core exploding. Tali found this quite silly, naturally, as an exploding drive core wasn't the sort of a thing a ship should be named after, and anyone who was close enough to an exploding drive core to hear it probably wouldn't live long enough to report what it sounded like. As for Kaski'Fjal, she knew nothing except that he was the one chosen to replace her father on the admiralty board.

"He sounds like a prick," Joker quipped.

"Lay in a course for his coordinates, maximum speed."

Joker rolled his eyes. "I _always_ go at maximum speed, commander. It's not like there's a speed selector on the FTL drive or anything like that."

"But if there was, I'm sure you'd have it cranked up to maximum."

"Yeah, but I'd give ETAs for the slowest speed. I always underestimate the time it takes to do something, that way when I come under everyone's impressed."

Shepard shook his head. "Joker..."

"Hey, I'm just saying you gotta manage peoples' expectations if you want to get ahead!"

* * *

When the _Normandy_ reached the coordinates that admiral Kaski'Fjal vas Bababadalgharagh-takamminarronnkonn-bronntonnerronntuonn-thunntrovarrhounawnska-wntoohoohoordenenthurnuk had provided, Shepard suspected that something wasn't quite right. Kaski's ship was in some backwater system far away from any well-travelled relay routes, not to mention as far away from the Migrant Fleet as one could be. His "private yacht" was almost as large as the _Normandy_, and according to their sensors, the admiral was the only one aboard. It was also painted a exceedingly loud shade of bright pink, with fluorescent green trim running the length the ship. Shepard had seen his share of starships in his time, but this had to be the most downright _ugly_ piece of engineering he had ever laid eyes upon.

Joker thought the same, and he grimaced as he docked the _Normandy_ with Kaski's yacht. "EDI, I think you should run a decontamination after this is done. It's like being close to this ship is gonna give the _Normandy_ an STD or something."

"Ships do not get 'infected', Mr. Moreau."

"That's not a risk I'm willing to take! I mean, who colours their ship _pink?"_

"They're quarians, Joker," said Shepard. "Maybe they have different associations with the colour pink?"

Tali immediately put an end to that idea. "No, we _don't."_

Nonetheless Shepard was trying his utmost to quell the sneaking suspicion that he was going to dislike this Kaski individual. Still, he and Tali were going over fully armed, not taking any chances. Neither of them had any idea what to expect when the airlock cycle finished, although nothing could have really prepared them for what awaited on Kaski's "private yacht."

The second the airlock opened Shepard's nostrils were assaulted by an overpowering aroma of..._something._ There were no words in any human tongue that could accurately describe it, although Shepard might say it was a combination between cheap cologne combined with the scent of body odour and cheap beer. Tali was more fortunate, as her mask could filter out the offensive smell, while Shepard could do nothing try to breathe through his mouth. This accomplished little except making him gag.

Then there was the actual interior of the ship. The decks and bulkheads were both painted a colour of orange that was so intense it almost hurt Shepard's eyes to look at it. Running along the floor and ceiling were a series of lights that alternated between bright pink and an even brighter purple. A faint tune played from some far-off corner of the ship, at least Shepard _thought_ it was music, because the beat was completely irregular and the most prominent "instrument" sounded like a cross between bagpipes and badly-tuned hurdy gurdy.

And this was just the airlock.

Past the airlock they came to a large room that made the airlock passageway seem positively restrained by comparison. Kaski was lying sofa that was much, much too large for him, one that was covered in hot pink velour. Several rotating spotlights hung from the ceiling with each one producing a different (yet equally obnoxious) colour, creating a nauseating spectacle of swirling light that was making Shepard dizzy. As if that weren't offensive enough, the entire floor looked like it had been lifted wholesale from the dance floor of a cheesy nightclub.

That was to say nothing of Kaski himself. His suit was bright, neon green, while his arms and legs were the same shade of hot pink found throughout the ship. The faceplate of his mask was rimmed with rapidly-flashing lights, while a similar strip of lights ran from his shoulders all the way down the sides of his body to his boots. He was so bright that one could probably see him at a distance of several lightyears. Shepard could do nothing except stand there and stare with his jaw agape.

"Admiral?" he said, quickly trying to restore some semblance of politeness, although Kaski's appearance made it very hard for him not to stare rudely.

Kaski lept up from the sofa. "Welcome! Welcome to my humble abode! I am admiral Kaski'Fjal vas Bababadalgharagh-takamminarronnkonn-bronntonnerronntuonn-thunntrovarrhounawnska-wntoohoohoordenenthurnuk . Please note that I expect the name of my ship to be pronounced in full, never in short form! To do is to spit upon the sacrifice of the thirteen quarians who died liberating it from the hands of batarian raiders!"  
_And yet they honour their sacrifice by giving the ship a ridiculous name?_ Shepard thought. "You were recently promoted to this position, I take it? Rael'Zorah's replacement?"

Kaski turned around, revealing that the area of his suit covering his posterior had the phrase _Party Right Here_ written thereupon in the quarian language. "Yes, though I _do_ wonder why they promoted me, manager of waste recycling on the _Bababadalgharagh-takamminarronnkonn-bronntonnerronntuonn-thunntrovarrhounawnska-wntoohoohoordenenthurnuk_ . One day admiral Xen walks up to me and says, in fewer than ten words, no less, that I'm an admiral! I can't believe my good fortune!"

That someone like this could be promoted to the position of admiral told Shepard that this was some sort of political ploy; to further disgrace Rael'Zorah's legacy by replacing him with this "unique" individual, perhaps?

Tali was of the same mind. "I thought admirals were promoted from the ranks of officers. Why would Daro'Xen promote someone who was _manager of waste recycling?"_

Kaski ignored her words and stared at Tali; even with his helmet in place it was clear he was harbouring some rather unseemly thoughts. "Ah, so this is the famous Tali'Zorah, is it not? Your gaze is so innocent, your hips so round and wide...my heart is aflame with desire! Perhaps you should excuse us for a moment, commander, so that me and this lovely young woman might be alone together?"

Shepard had to fight to keep himself from staring with mouth agape. _Is this guy for real?_ "Look, we're just here to talk about your findings!"

Kaski snapped upright. "Oh, um, yes. You'll have to forgive me, commander, sometimes the physical urges are terribly difficult to resist. As I said on the comm earlier, I've recently come across rather disturbing evidence that admiral Xen, the very person who promoted me, has been continuing Rael'Zorah's research!"

"What sort of evidence?" Shepard asked. "How did you come across it."

He slouched back in the sofa. "I was making myself at home in Rael's old office – it was still full of his old things, you see – when I got to feeling rather peckish. So I went out to get some nutrient paste, only for those bastards to tell me that I'm not allowed to exceed my weekly quota! Me, an admiral, being told that I have a quota! So I go back to my office, only to find Zaal'Koris snooping around! Luckily he didn't catch a glimpse of me."

_Amazing, given what you're wearing._ "What was Koris after?"

"Damned if I know, commander! I just wanted to get even with that prick, so I broke into his quarters while he was off-ship and stole the files from his private terminal. In them, I discovered that he was investigating admiral Xen's activities during the past few months and..." Kaski trailed off, then began looking at Tali again, with the same lecherous gaze. "I'm sorry, commander, but this woman is driving me mad with desire! I simply _must_ have her! I would risk death by infection if only to have but one night with her!"

Tali was taken aback by this outburst, understandably. "N...no! What is wrong with you?"

"_Keelah,_ commander! How do you resist her?" Kaski started becoming more and more agitated, pacing about the room. "She must have seduced everyone on your ship by now. No! Not seduced! Tali simply exists, and you want her! She does nothing to entice you, but _you...just...want...her!"_

"Enough of this!" Shepard growled. "Let's just get back to what we were talking about!"

Kaski returned to the sofa. "Oh, of course, commander. You'll have to forgive that little outburst of mine, it's just that Tali'Zorah is so...incredibly...desirable. Now, what we were talking about? Oh yes, the files I nabbed from Koris' office. Well, after looking through them I discovered that he was covertly monitoring Daro'Xen's activities. According to these surveillance logs she was shipping a number of fully-intact geth platforms to an undisclosed location. Not only that, there were reports that said she was in contact with batarian slavers!"

Shepard glanced over at Tali. "Slavers...guess that's where they've been getting their test subjects."

"Test subjects?" said Kaski.

"A group of quarians has been performing gruesome experiments," Shepard explained. "From what we've been able to tell, they're trying to fuse human bodies with geth platforms, though they haven't had much success."

He remained silent for several seconds. "Fusing geth with humans? That...that makes no sense whatsoever! What could they possibly get out of _that? _That's like...like..." Kaski stood up and once again started getting agitated. "I...I'm sorry, commander, I just can't concentrate when that woman is sitting there! My blood _burns_ with lust just looking at her! I...I _must have her!_ I if I cannot have her I shall surely die! Well, maybe I won't 'die', but I'll probably kill myself if I can't be with her! Please, commander, just let me have _one_ night with Tali! That's all I ask."

"That's enough! Just tell us everything you know, _without_ sexually harassing my engineer!" He felt the urge to stand up for his partner and give this quarian a thrashing, but Tali was more than capable of sticking up for herself.

Kaski sat back down again. "Once again my apologies, commander. Normally I am a model of restraint, you see, but Tali'Zorah's loveliness is enough to break down even my immense resilience to feminine charms. Now we were talking about what I learned of admiral Xen, yes? Well, the following day I received an anonymous message from 'a certain interested party' who was also investigating the admiral's rather, eh, _immoral_ activities. According to the message, Daro'Xen was conducting her research in a secret base located in orbit around the star humans call Eta Carinae-"

The quarian clutched at his chest, let out a brief grunt of pain, then slumped forward, smacking his head on the glass table in front of the sofa. After remaining motionless for several seconds it became clear that something terrible had befallen Kaski'Fjal. Tali walked over to his body and scanned him with her omni-tool.

"He...he's dead!"

Shepard stood up, terribly confused about all this. "How? From what?"

She ran a few more scans. "It looks like had a sudden heart attack, but - this is really weird Shepard – he was in perfect health!"

He suspected that something sinister was at work, but he couldn't resist the temptation to make a joke. "Maybe you were just too much woman for him to handle, Tali."

Ignoring his remark, she ran a few more scans. "Shepard, someone uploaded a virus to his suit's computer. According to my omni-tool, it was programmed to wait until he uttered the words 'Eta Carinae' and then it would cause his heart to stop beating!"

That only further confused matters. "Why would it do that? He said that admiral Xen was doing secret research at Eta Carinae. If she or someone working for her is the one who uploaded that virus, why would they wait until _after_ he revealed vital information to kill him?"

Tali continued scanning Kaski's suit logs but found nothing of interest, save for a copy of his personal will which stated that, during his funeral, the name of his ship was to be pronounced in full and never in short, as anything less would be considered an affront to his memory. "I think I know why this man was promoted to the admiralty board, Shepard. He said that admiral Koris was investigating admiral Xen's activities, so Xen promoted Kaski and intentionally gave him evidence of what she was doing."

Shepard quickly gathered her line of thought. "So if he told the board about what she was doing, they'd be hearing it from a guy with a suit coloured neon green and hot pink. And who was promoted from _waste management – _good way to thoroughly discredit the accusations against you." That meant that Kaski had likely already made his case the fleet's admiralty board, and had his testimony thoroughly rebuffed. "That still doesn't explain why that virus was planted in his suit's computer. If Xen wanted him dead, why not just kill him before he had a chance to talk to us? In fact, why kill him at all? Wouldn't that just lend credence to his claims?"

"I don't know, Shepard. Maybe Xen _wants_ us to find her, but have no idea why, unless it's a very, very obvious trap."

"Maybe, but why kill this quarian, if no one would take anything he said seriously?"

Tali shrugged. "Maybe she just didn't like him?"

"If there's nothing more we can get from him, then let's get off this ship before the colours start to make my eyes bleed."

* * *

EDI had one more thing to reveal when Shepard and Tali returned to the _Normandy._ "At the moment Kaski'Fjal suffered his fatal heart attack, his suit computer attempted to upload a virus to our ship. It was of a particularly insidious construction, designed to infiltrate our systems and transmit the _Normandy's _coordinates to an unknown recipient. Had it not been for my continued monitoring of our systems, it is likely the virus would never be discovered.

"Well I guess you're good for _something_," Joker quipped.

"Is there no way to determine where the virus sent its data?" said Shepard.

"None – the information is transmitted to an untraceable extranet address. Whoever programmed this virus was clearly in possession of great skill."

He pondered what he should do about this. Their enemy, whether it was this Hvenna'Tor individual or admiral Xen, had not counted on them having EDI on their side. Perhaps they should string them along and see what happened? "EDI, let's try throwing them a bone. Send our coordinates to the address in the virus; make it look like it's successfully infiltrated the _Normandy's_ systems. But only send the coordinates of where we were a few days ago – if they send someone after us, I don't want them getting _too_ close."

Joker glanced up at him. "Interesting plan, commander. Maybe they'll send the quarian version of the Spectres after us?"

That left the issue of Kaski'Fjal's body and his private yacht. They couldn't just leave it adrift in space, so Shepard sent a message to the Migrant Fleet's admiralty board asking what should be done with the ship and the deceased body, and mere minutes later he received a response (from no one individual in particular) that read:

_"Admiral" Kaski'Fjal has no family and he certainly didn't have any friends. Do with his body what you will. And don't bother bringing his "private yacht" back to the flotilla; we will not debase the dignity the of Migrant Fleet by allowing such an abomination of a spacefaring vessel within our ranks._

_Migrant Fleet Admiralty Board_

Kaski's body was taken to the _Normandy's_ morgue, bringing the total number of dead quarians on board to two. That left Kaski's ship, and since the Migrant Flotilla did not want it back, that left only one option in Shepard's eyes. He went back to the cockpit to inform Joker of the good news.

"Hey Joker, you want to perform a live-fire test of the Thanix cannon?"

His eyes brightened at the prospect. "On that ugly piece of crap? Of course, commander! But, uh, don't you think that's kinda overkill? I mean, these guns pack the punch of nuclear bomb and all that."

Shepard gave an apathetic shrug. "Maybe, but I don't want even a trace of that ship to survive. Getting rid of it is a favour to the universe."

"Won't argue with you there, commander."

Joker piloted the _Normandy _to a safe distance while Shepard made an announcement over to the rest of the crew that brief live-fire exercise was about to take place. Down in the main battery Garrus was delighted that he would have the opportunity to test his latest modifications to the Thanix cannon, while in engineering Tali could not help but feel that the galaxy would better off without that horribly ugly ship flying around. Meanwhile in her office, Miranda simply wondered what the hell the commander was doing.

At this distance Kaski's yacht was too far away to be anything more than a speck in the distance, but Shepard didn't care one bit. "Joker..._fire."_

With weapons locked on the yacht, all Joker had to do was push a button (which he referred to as the "screw you" button) on the console and the Thanix cannon sent forth two streams of molten metal, speeding through space at relativistic velocities. They slammed into the yacht almost immediately after being fired, instantly vaporising the hideous vessel in massive explosion. All that remained of Kaski's ship were pieces no bigger than dust grains.

"Hell yeah!" Joker exclaimed.

Seeing the huge explosion in the distance appealed to some primal part of Shepard's psyche. "Just wait until we gave the Collectors a taste." Then they would be repaid for the destruction of the first _Normandy,_ something that had long been a point of grief for the commander.

* * *

"You did _what?"_

"I have intentionally leaked the location of the research base to Commander Shepard. I shall be arriving there within the next few days, well before he reaches it."

Hvenna'Tor was at a complete loss for words. What could be closer to the height of stupidity than giving away their location to the one person who was investigation them? "This...this is insane! Please, Admiral Xen-"

"That's _Overseer _to you, Hvenna'Tor! Did I not instruct you never to use my name over the comm channels or among your fellow researchers? You don't know how might be listening in, and besides, I like the name 'Overseer'; it took me a shamefully long time to come up with that, you know!"

"All right, _Overseer," _he said, putting a clear tone of contempt on the last word. "But what possible reason do you have for endangering our entire operation?" In reality Hvenna knew precisely the reason – the admiral's abhorrent human fetish – but he wanted to hear her reasoning, which would no doubt be completely absurd.

"He will make a powerful ally; surely you can see that! And before you start whining that he will never side with us, I am fully confident in my abilities of persuasion. You need not know more than that!"

"Persuade!" he cried, unable to contain his anger. "We are using human slaves in our experiments, and you expect to be able to persuade him? I know enough of Shepard to tell you that he will only seek to destroy us, nothing else!"

She remained calm in spite of his growing fury. "As I have already told you, I have read the commander's psychological profile and I believe he will be quite susceptible to my charms. He's lived aboard starships all his life – who else can speak to his soul but a quarian? I think I understand the commander better than anyone else, and when we finally meet face-to-face he shall be, as they say, 'putty in my hands.'"

He grimaced at the mental image of the admiral being intimate with a human. "And if he decides to attack us, what then? What of our research? What of the future of our people?"

"Bah! You worry too much, Hvenna'Tor! If there is nothing to bother me with, then this conversation is over!"

The comm channel closed, leaving Hvenna to stew in impotent rage. He knew that the Overseer was always a little "eccentric," but never had he imagined that she would go so far as to jeopardise their entire project simply to satisfy her own disgusting fetishes. Something had to be done about Shepard, regardless of how the Overseer felt. They were simply too close to their goal to risk having some Spectre ruin everything. They had already solved the "exploding head" problem, and right this instant there was a test subject fresh from the Mind Flayer who was commanding several geth platforms. Soon they would move from a handful of platforms to hundreds, and from there they would soon control the entire geth race.

He stormed out of his office and into the main test chamber, where Taedal was busy running some tests on the "mental integrity" of the current test subject. Being connected the geth's neural network put a tremendous amount of strain on an individual's brain, so their latest line of research was aimed towards reducing the amount of information "the brain" would have to process. In spite of all this it was clear that one individual would not be enough – they would require many more, perhaps hundreds of brains to bring the rest of the geth under their control. Ideally, they would be able to move away from using the entire human body altogether and simply use their brains, although they were not yet at that point in their research.

"The Overseer has gone mad," he declared to Taedal. "She has given the coordinates of this base to Commander Shepard, and intends to 'persuade' him to join our cause once he arrives."

Taedal stared blankly at him. "If I didn't know you better, Hvenna, I'd say you were joking. But...you obviously aren't."

"I won't let that woman's disgusting fetish and personal vanity doom this project, not when we're so close! There's only way to resolve this: we must send the Black Guard after Shepard and eliminate him. The Overseer's virus has infiltrated his ship's systems and is transmitting its coordinates. Tracking him should not prove overly difficult."

"The Black Guard? Those are the Overseer's personal soldiers; when she finds out that you've had her troops kill Shepard, she'll have your head!"

Hvenna turned away from him. "I suspect not. The Overseer knows that it has been through my endeavours alone that this project has been so successful. Without me we would still be fumbling along Rael'Zorah's line of research. She will be angry, yes, but I do not think she will dismiss me from my post."

"Then I'll send out a contingent of the Black Guard. I just hope you know what you're doing, Hvenna. If the overseer comes here and she's all pissed off, I'm going to tell her this was all your doing!"

He ignored his threats. The Black Guard would object to killing to Shepard, so Hvenna'Tor would take advantage of the fact that the Overseer only communicated through him. He would convince the Black Guard that the Overseer wanted Shepard dead (due to her being jilted by him), and they would not question him.

In spite of the Overseer's often bizarre personality quirks, Hvenna'Tor had to admire her for creating the Black Watch. They were the Migrant Fleet's elite soldiers, albeit unknown to everyone except the Overseer herself. Clad in their black armour and packing enough shields to withstand the combined fire of an entire platoon of soldiers, they were more than a match for any other elite force in the galaxy. And anyone who survived an encounter with them would never be able to tell they were quarians, as their suits were cunningly designed to conceal all distinctive quarian features. The recruits were exiles, criminals, and other individuals the flotilla had no use for, and people who would not be missed. That meant that they were occasionally undisciplined, but entirely expendable.

In spite of all he had planned, Hvenna'Tor bore no particular ill-will towards Commander Shepard. The man had done a great deal to help the Migrant Fleet by taking back the _Alarei,_ far more than one could ever expect from an alien. For a moment he could understand why the Overseer was so infatuated with him, but that did not excuse her behaviour in the slightest. For what it was worth, though, he could not wait to see the look on the Overseer's face when Shepard rejected her.

* * *

"Uh, Shepard? It's Aethyta. You better get down the cargo hold, there's something wrong with Grunt."

He sighed in annoyance, having just sat down to enjoy his morning breakfast, which consisted of a bowl of _Khorne Flakes _("now with 100% of your daily recommended intake of KILLMAIMBURN" the box proudly proclaimed). After hastily devouring the last of his breakfast, he walked to the lift and punched in Deck 4.

When he reached the cargo hold, Grunt was anxious pacing back and forth, all the while Aethyta was trying her utmost to calm the krogan. "Young man, if you don't stop banging around this instant, there'll be no more ryncol for a week! You hear me?"

"What's going on here?" said Shepard.

The matriarch bore an expression of pure exasperation. "It's Grunt. Something's got him all riled up; he was throwing things around and making a mess of things when I got here. I'd swear he was throwing a temper tantrum, if krogan do that sort of thing."

Grunt looked about as if he were stalking some prey. "Something...something _is_ wrong, Shepard! I _feel_ wrong! Like, like I want to tear something apart with my bare hands and feast on its entrails, but I can't! But now it's like it's not my choice, like I just want to...want to..._RAARRRGGH!"_ He slammed his head against a nearby window, nearly shattering it.

"Aethyta, you know more about krogan than I do. Is this normal?"

"I don't know, my father never told me about his adolescence. I always assumed it was like the adolescence of any other species; you know, you take em' out for a couple of drinks, maybe to a few strip clubs, that sort of thing."

_Maybe there's something in the _Normandy's _ database,_ he thought. "EDI, any information on what might be wrong with him?"

"Krogan medical data is scarce, commander. It is likely that one would have to travel to the krogan homeworld of Tuchanka to find any information regarding Grunt's condition."

Grunt stopped pacing about, retaining a measure of self-control. "Our people were defeated and broken by doctors and scientists; we will not give them the same opportunity! I...I must endure this. I will not ask you to make a detour for my sake."

"I need everyone at their best for this mission. We'll go to Tuchanka."

Aethyta laughed. "Oh, _this_ should be fun! I always wanted to see the krogan homeworld; dad always said it was like the planetary equivalent of a meat grinder."

No one on board knew that a quarian vessel was following their every move. The Black Guard used a ship that had a stealth system as advanced as the one used by the _Normandy,_ rendering them completely undetectable. If they had known, however, that they would be going to Tuchanka, the Black Guard might have considered turning back. "Elite force" or not, the krogan homeworld was no place for aliens.


	12. Tuchankan Dust, Quarian Lust

Chapter 12 – Tuchankan Dust, Quarian Lust

* * *

Of all the planets in the galaxy, Tuchanka was the only one Shepard could genuinely say he was nervous about visiting.

Over four thousand years ago, the planet was covered in lush jungles and dense rainforests that were roamed by all manner of fierce, predatory creatures. While many planets could lay claim to having aggressive fauna, Tuchanka was far and beyond the most triumphant example of a planet where everything tried to kill you. The number of species (of both plants _and_ animals) that would not attempt to devour you could safely be counted on one hand, and it was in this evolutionary crucible that the krogan developed their legendary strength and resilience. Shepard had seen krogan take over fifty rounds and still remain in fighting shape, and if one of them got to within melee distance, the only thing to do was pray that your death was relatively painless.

Unfortunately, when the krogan first learned to split the atom, the results were predictably tragic. Within a week every major city on Tuchanka had been reduced to a smoking crater, and the planet quickly entered into a deep nuclear winter that killed off the vast majority of flora and fauna, and the krogan themselves reverted to warring clans. Thousands of years later, Tuchanka remained a barren, dust shrouded wasteland dotted with the ruins of countless cities, and to this day the krogan had made no concentrated effort to rebuild their civilisation, much preferring to fight amongst themselves. The genophage had done their species no favours; with little chance of ever having children of their own most krogan chose to pursue careers as mercenaries or pirates. And that was just quite all right for most of them.

Craning his head to look out the shuttle, Shepard watched as the dusty brown world of Tuchanka grew ever larger in the window. He wondered how this barren, desolate planet could support life, or why the krogan had made absolutely no effort to rebuild their civilisation. From orbit one could see what had once been sprawling cities, now nothing more than craters and vast stretches of ruins. Tali, who had more or less made up her to mind to _always_ accompany Shepard wherever he went, could not help but think of her own peoples' homeworld. Perhaps, she thought, if the krogan knew what it meant to lose their world, perhaps they would value it more?

Along with Tali, Grunt and Aethyta were packed into the shuttle (which, unfortunately, had not really been designed with someone the size of a krogan in mind). Garrus, who normally accompanied Shepard on nearly every outing, had elected to stay aboard the _Normandy, _given that the krogan had a less than friendly attitude towards the turians. Grunt was unable to sit still, constantly fidgeting in his seat. Shepard knew little about krogan physiology, but he guessed that Grunt's problem had either something to do with krogan adolescence (and if it were anything like anything else in krogan culture, it probably involved violence), or was it the result of being a tank-bred? With any luck someone one Tuchanka would be able to tell them.

"Stop fussing about, young man!" Aethyta said, cowing Grunt with her admonishment. "Or we'll turn this shuttle around and go right back to the ship!"

"You know more about krogan than I do," said Shepard. "You have no idea what's causing this? Is it 'krogan puberty?'"

The matriarch shrugged. "I don't know. I always figured that you dealt with krogan puberty like that of any other species – you go out, buy him a few drinks, maybe take him to a strip club. I guess things don't really work like that, though. You ever seen a krogan female, Shepard?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Eh, well, you probably wouldn't recognise one if you saw one. Krogan females don't look much different from the males." She leaned forward. "I'm guessing that's what Grunt's problem is. He hasn't even _seen_ a woman of his own kind. I bet if we hook up him with one it'll have this all sorted out in no time."

_Of course that's her suggestion. _"Everything is about sex with you, isn't it?"

She gave a look of feigned offence. "_About _sex? I _am_ sex."

"Err, yes. So...do you have any advice for dealing with the krogan? I must admit I don't have a lot of experience in interacting with their culture." In reality, nearly every encounter with krogan had ended with said krogan attempting to kill him.

"Nothing that you probably don't know already. They respect strength, and they prefer being forthright over being diplomatic. Just don't back down or show weakness and you should be all right. Oh, and don't play cards with them, either; they'll kill you if they lose."

"I'll...keep that in mind."

They were meeting with Urdnot Wrex, one of Shepard's former teammates, who had spent the last two years attempting to unite the disparate krogan clans. That was a bit of a surprising turn, as Wrex had once told Shepard that he had all but given up on his people. He had fond memories of fighting alongside Wrex, not only because of the battlemaster's dry wit and blunt, straightforward approach to problems, but also because having a huge, hulking krogan at one's side tended to make opponents think twice about attacking them.

The clan headquarters (if it really could be called that) was located underground near the heart of what had once been Tuchanka's largest city. Most krogan tended to remain either underground or inside ruined structures, as the conditions on the surface were rather hostile, even for krogan. As the shuttle descended through the atmosphere, all Shepard saw was an endless wasteland stretching out in all directions, with only the decaying husks of buildings punctuating the bleak landscape. Perhaps it was a testament to krogan engineering that the remains of their civilisation had endured thousands of years after the nuclear war had reduced the planet to its present state.

Grunt did not hide his disgust at what he saw. "_This_ is the krogan homeworld?"

"You know my dad took me and my mum here a few times," Aethyta said. "Dad always said that that spending too much time on Thessia would make us soft. It was our version of the family camping trip."

Shepard laughed at the idea. "So instead of roasting hot dogs over the campfire, you fought off packs of varren?"

"And that's what we roasted over the campfire. You ever had varren meat, Shepard?"

"No."

"Then count yourself lucky! After my first bite I nearly puked it all up. Dad just laughed and said that if that was bad I should try some ryncol. But oddly enough I didn't have any trouble with that."

Grunt scowled. "You lie. Ryncol rips through aliens like shrapnel."

"Ha! Maybe that's true for weaker people, but I had already built up a tolerance. You know that I had my first drink when I was seven years old? In human years, I guess that's like giving someone a shot of the hard stuff when she's still in diapers. And let me tell you about the first person I slept with..."

Shepard paused. "Um, is this going to be something nasty?"

She laughed. "If it isn't nasty, then you're doing it wrong! Anyway, my first time was with a quarian woman, and this was centuries before they started wearing those suits. Goddess, that woman was the sexiest thing on two legs, let me tell you. It was a damn shame when she got eaten."

"_Eaten?"_ he said, raising his eyebrows.

"See, there's this creature on the quarian homeworld; I forget what it's called, but it's sort of like a varren, only about ten times as large."

"It's called a _drizzit,_" said Tali, momentarily joining their conversation.

"Thanks for reminding me. Anyways, this poor woman liked to go hiking in the wilderness. It turns out that this is the equivalent of an extreme sport on the quarian homeworld, because nearly everything is trying to kill you. A bit like Tuchanka before the krogan nuked it into oblivion."

The landing pad was some distance below ground, so for a moment all Shepard saw was darkness until the shuttle touched down. When the hatch opened he was immediately hit with a blast of hot, dry air and the smell of metal and grease. A pair of heavily armed (what else would they be?) krogan awaited them, and neither of them were particularly impressed with the krogan that Shepard was bringing with him.

"The clan leader will speak with you, human," growled one of the krogan, his tone making it clear that it was only through Shepard's association with Wrex that they were even being allowed to set foot on Tuchanka. "And keep your callow runt on a leash while you're at it!"

Past the landing pad was a long, narrow tunnel that had once been part of the city's sewer system. "Good to see the place hasn't changed much," said Aethyta. "It'll probably take a week to get the dust and dirt out of my scalp."

The tunnel led to a large, cavernous hall that looked like it was a part of a highway system. The only light came from a few shafts of sunlight streaming through holes in the ceiling and several campfires the krogan had burning. Like so much else on this planet, the entire place was covered in rubble, to the point Shepard wondered just how far the actual ground was beneath all this debris. The air was choked with dust, and after several coughing bouts he soon envied Tali's environmental suit. Even being underground did little to diminish the heat of Tuchanka's sun, causing Shepard to work up a heavy sweat just walking about. Combined with the sheer amount of dust in this place, it meant he would need a good shower after leaving this planet.

Wrex was seated on his "throne" that was constructed from slabs of concrete. Several heavily-armed guards surrounded the "dias" while Wrex was in talks with a krogan that was clearly quite displeased about something. He paced back and forth frantically while waving his hands about, and though Shepard was too far away to hear what he was saying, he could tell from his tone of voice that the krogan was likely one step away from going on a berserk rampage. Wrex appeared totally disinterested in the matter, sitting with his head resting on his palm while the other krogan ranted and raved.

"This will not last! You've forsaken everything that makes us strong! Krogan don't negotiate; we do not make 'bargains' or 'treaties'. We are conquerors!"

Seeing Shepard was all the excuse Wrex needed to get out of these "talks." He stood up from his throne, and Shepard caught what was quite possibly a smile on his face, although he was not entirely sure. Krogan expressions weren't all that terribly easy to read. "Shepard!" he bellowed. "My friend!"

If Wrex were a dog, Shepard could easily imagine his tail wagging while he rushed forward to greet him. Look all others of his species Wrex was an intimidating sight, doubly so with the large scar running down the right side of his face. But at that moment there was nothing between them except the camaraderie of two people who had fought and shed blood together.

"You look well for dead, Shepard," said Wrex in his characteristic gravelly baritone. "Should have known death was only a minor inconvenience for you." Then, in a strange turn of events, Wrex looked at Aethyta and let out a laugh. "So, you haven't shrivelled up and died yet, asari?"

Shepard glanced over at the matriarch. "You two know each other?"

She laughed. "Know? Last time we met I distinctly recall him trying to kill me."

Wrex was not particularly perturbed by her remark. "When you're in the thrall of the blood rage, you don't much care who you kill." He turned back to face Shepard. "Something tells me you aren't here to share war stories, Shepard."

"I am, but I'm curious about your plans for the krogan. Last time we spoke you said you'd given up on your people."

"You know what happened on Virmire, Shepard. When I saw our people being made into tools for the hands of aliens for a second time, I knew that we had to change our ways, or end up as bones beneath the sun."

"And abandoned many of our most sacred traditions to get your say," said the krogan who had been quarreling with Wrex earlier. "It is not wise."

Rather than giving a verbal rebuke, as Shepard might have expected any other race to do, Wrex simply knocked the offending krogan down with a head-butt. "Speak when spoken to, Uvenk! I'll drag your clan into the light whether it likes it or not."

"Sounds like you're not making many friends."

"He's a traditionalist, and that means he's like a chained varren – fighting and dying for his own wretched piece of dirt. When his kind fall by the wayside, I can plant a flag on their corpses and rally the rest of us around it." Wrex returned to his throne, all the while Uvenk continued to sulk about, clearly humiliated. "This place is a neutral ground where all clans all welcome, and where violence is forbidden. Those who break the peace have two options: either pay a fine, or their clan is forbidden from setting foot here."

"That sounds oddly...restrained...for the krogan."

"There's been bloodshed; wouldn't be much fun without it. Clans who violate the laws are no longer welcome, and no compensation is to be paid for the death of their members. The bones of each clan I've declared unwelcome are now baking under the sun."

"But why the focus on individual clans, if you're trying to unite them?"

"Each clan has its own strengths. Clan Urdnot has the best strategists, while Clan Jorgal has the longest breeding line. Clan Gatatog holds the oldest settlements, while Clan Ravanor brews the strongest ryncol and Clan Nakmor's battle songs have the catchiest refrains."

Perhaps he was being pessimistic, but all this seemed a little too good to be true for Shepard. "No one's made made an organised attack against you? I mean, if you're rallying clans around you, then surely there are other warlords rallying clans as well?"

"They have, but we've done something that keeps even our most hated enemies from attacking: we've set aside an area where fertile females from all clans are protected, in exchange for their clan's loyalty. No krogan would dare endanger a fertile female, no matter what clan she belonged to."

_Smart move,_ Shepard thought. "I hope your plans work out, but back to the reason I'm here. I've got a krogan on my team, and he's got something wrong with him. He's restless and and on edge...well, more so than he usually is."

Grunt walked up to the throne, and Wrex leaned forward to examine him. "Where are you from, whelp? Was you clan wiped out before anyone told you what was expected of you?"

"I have no clan. I was tank-bred by Warlord Okeer, my line distilled from Shiagur, Kredak-"

Uvenk, having remained silent up until now, was predictably furious at the prospect of having a tank-bred krogan joining the ranks of Urdnot. "You recite warlords, but you are of the offspring of a syringe!"

Grunt had no reaction to Uvenk's taunt, merely retorting with, "I am pure krogan. You should be in awe."

"How long ago was this krogan flushed from the tank?" Wrex asked.

"Only a few months ago."

"Hmm, then I suppose he has never been through the Rite of Passage? "

"What do you mean? Is there something wrong with Grunt or not?"

"There's nothing wrong with him, he is merely becoming a full adult. You should count yourself lucky that he hasn't already torn your ship apart."

Tali stepped forward, having been too intimidated by the krogan to say anything up until now. "Wait, so this is the krogan equivalent of Pilgrimage?"

Wrex laughed. "I see you've still got the quarian with you, Shepard." For whatever reason, Wrex never called Tali by her name, instead referring to her only as "the quarian," as if she were the only one in existence. "I don't care what you aliens call it, all krogan must go through the Rite of Passage before they can claim membership in a clan."

This was too much for Uvenk. "Unacceptable! Your clan's rites may be dominant, but this abomination is _not_ krogan!"

Having wiped out countless tank-bred krogan alongside Shepard, it was rather surprising that Wrex was considering accepting one into the ranks of Clan Urdnot. "You'd have a tank-bred as one of your own?" Shepard asked.

"Only because he's with you."

"I have other means to oppose this," Uvenk muttered before storming off like a child who had been denied dessert.

"Ignore that idiot," said Wrex. "So Grunt, will you stand Clan Urdnot?"

Grunted milled about, not needing much time to think this decision. "Your clan is the strongest. It is what I am for."

"Good boy. Speak with the chief shaman on the level above this one; he will set you on the path." He looked back at Shepard. "I see you enjoy sticking your neck out for your people, Shepard. I do not forget how you helped me recover my family's armour, or how you convinced me that Saren's horde were not true krogan."

"This mission we're on...there's a good chance that none of us will be coming back. I need everyone at their best."

Wrex laughed. "Then it shall be a battle worthy of song, no doubt. May you die gloriously, Shepard."

* * *

While Shepard was discussing Grunt's condition with Wrex, a single quarian ship was entering into orbit around Tuchanka. It was a small vessel, barely large enough to hold its five occupants. Like the _Normandy_ it was equipped with a stealth system that stored its thermal emissions inside heatsinks within the hull. Thus is remained undetected by the _Normandy_ and any ground-based sensors on Tuchanka. The ship itself had no name and, as far the Migrant Fleet was concerned, did not even exist. Thus it was the perfect ship for the Black Guard, a group that no one except admiral Daro'Xen and her closest associates knew of. They were described as an "elite" group, although no one in the Black Guard would honestly describe themselves as such. The Black Guard was composed of exiles who had been given a choice by admiral Xen: either be exiled to some alien world, or accept a place within her "special forces."

They had been provided with the best equipment one could desire: guns that left no distinctive ballistic evidence that could be traced back to them, and armour that concealed their very identity as quarians. In every way it was vastly preferable to a life as exile, yet for one member of the Black Guard, a woman named Skade'Xan, it all felt hollow. She had been branded an exile for selling fleet defence schematics to a mercenary group in exchange for a frighteningly large amount of credits, and while joining the Black Guard seemed like welcome alternative to exile, their current mission – killing Commander Shepard – did not sit well with her.

"Have you heard?" said Shen'Tai, the ship's pilot, who had been exiled for purchasing a crate full of live squirrels from a human merchant. The squirrels had then gotten lose on Shen'Tai's ship, then began breeding at a prodigious rate. "Kal'Reegar was given the fleet's highest commendation for killing two hundred geth using only a knife."

"So what?" said another member of the Black Guard. "He's been given the highest commendation what, seven times now? I swear, the man represents 99% of the flotilla's military might."

"And he's earned every single one!" said Skade. "He's a tank on legs, that's what he is! I heard he once stared down a Geth Prime, and he made the Geth Prime _blink._"

Their mission was simple: find Shepard and kill him, by whatever means necessary. According to Hvenna'Tor, Shepard was getting too close to their "secret" operation and had to be eliminated. But that did not sit well with Skade, who had witnessed Tali'Zorah's trial and how Shepard had taken back the _Alarei_ after several squads of marines had failed.

"This is absurd," she said to herself, albeit loud enough for everyone else to hear. "They told me I was helping the Migrant Fleet when I joined the Black Guard...how are we helping the fleet hunting the one alien who gave a damn about us?"

"Damn straight!" said another. "Messing with Shepard is suicide; that guy presses a button and something awesome happens!" He then lowered his voice to a whisper. "And need I remind you that he's got Tali'Zorah on his crew? She's bad luck, and I want nothing to do with her!"

"I can't believe you still believe in that old superstition," said Shen. She was referring to the ancient quarian belief that the stars in ascension when a child was born determined its fate; when they were forced to flee their homeworld, the tradition was altered so that whatever star system the fleet was passing through at the time that decided the child's fate.

"I know for a fact that when Tali'Zorah was born, the flotilla was passing through system of the Star of Horrible Fate."

She waved her hand. "But that's just a name. There's nothing sinister about the Star of Horrible Fate, or the neighbouring Star of Unending Woe, the Star of Horrid Agonising Death, and the Star of Grotesquely Distended Rectums."

"Dismiss it if you wish, but nothing good can come from getting mixed up with her."

"And why does Hvenna want us to kill Shepard, anyway?" Skade said. "Everyone knows that admiral Xen has the raging hots for Shepard. I heard someone hacked into her omni-tool and found all these erotic stories she had written about him and posted to the extranet."

"I don't think he agrees with the admiral," Shen replied. "And he knows he's too valuable to the project for Daro'Xen to do anything about it."

No one in the Black Guard knew what, exactly, the "project" was, though there were plenty of rumours and hearsay going about. All they knew for certain was that they needed geth platforms and live humans. The humans were purchased from batarian slavers for the most part, and there was rampant speculation among the members of the Black Guard about just what they were being used for. Some said that the humans were being used in live-fire tests of geth weaponry, while others claimed that Hvenna'Tor was planning to create a race of quarian super soldiers whose bodies were "augmented" with geth parts, and that he was fusing geth components with humans as part of a "proof of concept" test. No one in the Black Guard had any illusions that they were part of something wholesome, but all of them knew that they had little choice in the matter. They were criminals who had been sentenced to exile, and their choice was to either take part in admiral Xen's fiendish plans, or be left on some miserable backwater planet.

"I have an idea," said Skade. "Let's just forget about killing Shepard, and _say_ we did. I for one have no desire to go fighting a Spectre, especially not on the krogan homeworld."

"That's stupid," Shen replied. "They'll find out in a hurry that he's not dead, and then we'll be screwed."

"Then what about if we just talk to Shepard, let him know that we were sent to kill him but we're not going to, and that if he just lays low for a bit then everything will be all right."

"Both of you are missing the obvious choice," said Zhuten'Kaal, easily the most recognisable member of the Black Guard. The man was enormous, standing over seven feet tall, and if one could see his body underneath his suit it would resemble a mass of pure muscle. He claimed to be strong enough to put his fist through a man's entire head, and that this was the exact cause for his exile.

"And what would that be?"

"We tell admiral Xen that Hvenna wants Shepard dead, but make it look as though the communication didn't come from us, so Hvenna won't know we disobeyed him. She'll rip him to shreds, and then countermand Hvenna's order to have the commander killed."

"Interesting idea, but how do we get the information to the admiral without anyone knowing it was us?" Skade asked.

Zhuten leaned forward and began his explanation, speaking in a surprisingly sophisticated manner for someone most people would regard as a brutish criminal. "You are familiar with Cerberus, the organisation Shepard is working with? What we do is this: Shepard is undoubtedly familiar with our appearance after our encounter on Omega. We also know that the head of Cerberus, the 'Illusive Man', is in communication with Migrant Fleet, though to what end I don't know. So we fake a message from Cerberus to the flotilla, accusing them of sending covert operatives to assassinate Shepard, and we make it clear that they mean _us._ Then admiral Xen will know for certain that Hvenna'Tor ordered us to kill Shepard, at least that's what I'm hoping for."

No said anything for a few moments. "You can fake a message from Cerberus?" Skade wondered. "Don't they use extremely sophisticated encryption protocols?"

Zhuten shrugged. "Perhaps, but nothing we can't handle."

And so they all silently agreed to betray their commander; not that anyone who recruited criminals into an "elite" special forces group should have expected much loyalty from them in the first place. In the years to come, when Daro'Xen's actions would finally come to light, everyone would agree that, compared to others with a fetish for cartoonish supervillainy, she really didn't have the chops for it. Her reputation was done no favours when her erotic real-person fiction involving Commander Shepard came to light. "Absolutely disgusting," said one observer. "There's nasty, _really damn nasty,_ and then there's this. The person behind this is obviously a sick, sick woman." Another remarked, "I thought Gregory Matthius's _Aria of Flame of Frost_ had a sickening amount of sexual content, but this...this is is something else entirely." Still, as shocking as it was, it paled in comparison to Prazza's infamous scene in _Fornax,_ thus sparing Daro'Xen from lasting infamy.

* * *

Back on Tuchanka, Grunt had been directed to speak with the chief shaman in order to arrange his rite of passage. Just what this rite entailed was kept secret from those who had not yet gone through with it, although Shepard guessed that it involved violence. Unfortunately, Gatatog Uvenk had got there first and was already in the process of trying to block Grunt from undergoing the rite.

"Letting that abomination undergo the rite of passage spits upon millennia of tradition! For all we know the beasts could ignore him like a lump of plastic!"

Grunt pushed his way forward. "I'll speak for myself!"

The shaman, who looked to Shepard like every other krogan save for slight differences in skin tone and the pattern on the cowl over his back hump. "Hmm, this is the tank-bred, then?" he growled. "One head, two eyes, two arms, two legs...smells correct as well! Your protests ring hollow, Uvenk. The beasts of the rite will tear him apart like any other."

"What does this rite involve, exactly?" Shepard asked, not really expecting to get a straight answer this time, either.

"I cannot give you the specifics, but each prospect must either succeed, or his carcass will become a feast for the varren. Urdnot will have_ no one_ that will weaken our clan."

"I can think of nothing that would weaken us more than allowing this tank-bred to join our ranks," said Uvenk. "If we accept him then we might as well accept every last tank-bred in the galaxy! I hereby invoke a denial! My _krantt_ stands against him; he has no one!"

The shaman grumbled. "This whining cur tries my patience, but he invokes correctly. Grunt, who is your _krantt –_ the warriors loyal to you, who will stand and fight at your side?"

Shepard was not exactly well-versed in krogan culture, but he was familiar enough with the concept of the _krantt – _those who swore their allegiance to a battlemaster and fought for honour and glory in his name. The word was variously translated as as "bodyguards" or "retinue" but that did not quite convey the exact meaning of it. A krogan's worth as a warrior was judged not only on his individual strength, but also his ability to inspire loyalty among those who followed him. That did not mean that it was a one-way street, however; for a member of a _krantt_ there was no greater shame than to flee the field of battle before one's battlemaster. If the battlemaster fell, then it was the solemn duty of those in his _krantt_ to continue the fight until they too fell.

"We stand with Grunt," Shepard declared, "as shipmates and comrades-in-arms."

"That is not the same thing," answered the shaman, "but I grant you aliens your loose interpretation."

"Aliens don't know strength!" Uvenk cried. "My followers are true krogan, while everything about that _thing_ is a lie! You shame us all-"

Aethyta pushed her way to the front of the group. "_Nobody_ talks about my boy that way!" she hissed, right before doing something Shepard could not possibly see coming. She leaned back, then gave Uvenk such a fierce head-butt that the krogan, no doubt weighing many times than the matriarch, was knocked backwards.

"You...you dare, asari?" Uvenk said after recovering from the surprise of what had just happened. Aethyta seemed no worse for the wear, with only a small cut on her forehead.

The shaman burst into a bout of raucous laughter. "I like this asari! She understands!" Uvenk, thoroughly humiliated, stormed off in a huff.

"What can I say? My father was a krogan," she said. "He should have considered himself lucky I didn't just kick him in the quad."

"Then perhaps you will fare better than I expected, though whether you shall live or die is still undecided. During the ritual you must be prepared for anything."

"We're ready," Shepard said. "Let's do this."

Grunt slammed his fists together and Aethyta drew her enormous "customer appreciation shotgun." Only Tali looked slightly apprehensive about all this; she was probably the first quarian ever to take part in the krogan rite of passage, Shepard guessed. In a way her people and the krogan were alike in many ways; both were made pariahs by the Citadel Council, both were looked upon with distrust and outright by many people, and while the quarians had no world of their own, the krogan homeworld could barely support life. He wondered if Tali had ever noticed these similarities herself.

Much to his dismay, the rite of passage took place outside, beneath the searing heat of Tuchanka's sun Aralakh. The name meant "eye of wrath," which was most definitely an appropriate name for it, as no sooner had the four of them gone outside than they were instantly hit with a wave of heat. The wind blow dust in his eyes, as if things weren't bad enough, and again Shepard envied Tali with her environmental suit.

Ahead lay a towering structure the krogan called the "keystone." What it was remained a mystery, although Shepard guessed from its appearance that it might have been a space elevator at some point. The ground was littered with the decaying bodies of dead krogan of those who had failed their rite of passage, along with the corpses of varren and other creatures whose names Shepard did not know. It was a thoroughly grim sight, made no better by the wind-swept, sand-blasted ruins surrounding them. He tried to imagine what this city might have looked like before the nuclear holocaust had devastated Tuchanka, yet Shepard could not picture it. Perhaps it was mere prejudice on his part, but he could not see the krogan as anything but the tribal, clannish sorts that they were.

To begin the rite, all they had to do was throw a switch near the keystone. This caused a large stone sledge to begin rising into the air, while a canned speech played over a series of loudspeakers.

_"First the krogan conquered Tuchanka, a world only we are fit to hold, by killing everything we saw!"_

The sledge dropped to the ground with enough force to make the ground tremble. This called forth a pack of varren from their burrows, who sensed that it was feeding time. Grunt was rather dismayed that he would be pitted against such lowly creatures. "These beasts are all they can muster? Ha!" He unloaded a round from his shotgun into the nearest varren, then another, and yet one more, and when his thermal clip was at capacity he charged at another one of the varren. After tackling it the ground, Grunt grabbed each of its jaws with his hands then, in a stunning display of strenght, ripped the beast's jaws apart.

"Just like dad's camping trips," Aethyta quipped as she readied her massive shotgun for the next wave of varren.

In spite of their ferocity, varren weren't exactly the brightest creatures around. They charged blindly towards the four of them, at which point Aethyta lifted them off their feet with a biotic field, allowing them to shoot the varren out of the air in a sort of grisly form of live-game skeet shooting. Grunt was laughing all the while; for him this _was_ little more than a game, and varren weren't exactly a challenge for a genetically-engineered krogan super-soldier.

"You ever had gone varren hunting?" Aethyta asked, reloading her gun

"Uh...no?"

"Dad loved to take me on his little hunting excursions. We faced more varren then than we are now. I guess the krogan are getting soft!"

With the varren slain, someone had to trigger the keystone again to continue the test. Grunt, always eager for battle, bounded over the switch and threw it. The stone sledge was raised up, and another canned speech blared over the loudspeaker:

_"Then the krogan were raised to the stars, to conquer the fears of a galaxy, by killing everything we saw!"_

The sledge slammed into the ground, summoning forth a creature that was so thoroughly bizarre and yet frightening in its appearance that it could only have evolved on Tuchanka. It looked very much like a dragon, with immense wings and red scales covering its body, but possessing a head like that a millipede. As soon as it appeared, however, it merely let out a shrill screech and flew off, leaving only what Shepard guessed with its young to attack them. They looked a bit like gigantic lobsters with enormous, steer-like horns on their heads; whatever they were, it was clear they were a little more threatening mere varren.

"What the hell are those things?" Shepard as he reloaded his assault rifle's thermal clip.

"Klixen," Aethyta answered. "Don't let them get close – they can breathe fire."

"Oh, like quarians, then?" he said, earning him a nasty glare from Tali.

While a fair bit larger and more ferocious than varren, the klixen evidently weren't much smarter. The four of them stood with their backs to the keystone, while the klixen charged towards them, straight into the field of fire. With a steady stream of fire from Shepard's assault rifle andTali and Grunt's shotguns, the klixen fell rapidly to their hall of bullets. Aethyta lifted one of its feet with her biotics, then sent it flying into the distance, where it exploded on impact with the ground. Their ability to breathe fire meant they were filled with flammable gas, so upon death a klixen would invariably explode into a shower of bloody chunks, much to Grunt's delight.

But now their thermal clips were at capacity, and there were still six or seven klixen charging towards them. In addition to their fire-breath, the klixen had claws and mandibles that looked strong enough to bite through the hardest armour, so Shepard had no intention of letting any of them get close to him. He and Tali went left, while Grunt and Aethyta went right, splitting the horde of klixen in two. Tali let loose her combat drone, and a pair of klixen decided that this glowing sphere, which occasionally emitted jolts of electricity, was more interesting than live prey. As soon as the klixen were clustered around the combat drone Shepard lobbed an frag grenade into their midst, blasting them apart and sending pieces of them flying all directions.

Meanwhile, a klixen had closed in on Grunt and was now belching fire at him. This didn't seem to bother him much, as the plates on his skin protected him from the flames. Instead he grabbed the klixen by one its legs, then wrenched it so hard that it tore away from its body. As soon as that was done, he began trying to stave in the klixen's head with the butt of his shotgun. Aethyta looked at him with approval, before turning around and hitting another klixen with a biotic field of such strength that it was ripped apart before their eyes.

That appeared to be the last of them, but there was still one more part to the rite that they had to complete. Once again Grunt triggered the keystone, playing yet another canned speech:

_"Now all krogan carry the genophage. It is our curse, our reward, for killing everything we saw!"_

The sledge fell to the ground, but this time nothing happened. Shepard wondered if this were not some sort of trick, but the krogan weren't known for that sort of thing. Just as he was beginning to think that something had gone wrong with the proceedings, the ground began to tremble, and Shepard let out a string of curse words, for he knew _exactly_ what was about to happen. He had experienced before on Akuze, and he had experienced again on several worlds he had visited during his hunt for Saren. He still vividly recalled the moment his squad landed on Akuze and the thresher maws had erupted from the ground like unholy beasts of the abyss.

_"Run for your lives!" one the marines cried. "Sandworms! Sandworms!"_

_ Some of them tried to stand and fight, but the gunfire from their assault rifles was little more than an annoyance to the thresher maws. He watched in horror as Toombs was snatched up and dragged underground, no doubt to a terrible end. Shepard only hoped that he died quickly. He ordered everyone to fall back to their shuttle, but one of the marines was apparently possessed by the spirit of Prazza, and charged at the nearest thresher maw with his guns blazing. A second later he was devoured._

He gave his head a shake, bringing him back to reality. And the reality was that, in his tactical appraisal, they were all screwed, because aside from him they were all wielding shotguns. That meant they would have to get closer to the thresher maw, and getting close to one of those things was tantamount to suicide. _Do they really make each krogan kill a thresher maw just to prove themselves? _he thought. He didn't realise that the goal was not to kill the thresher maw, but merely to survive.

The thresher maw spat a glob of acid in their direction, barely leaving the four of them enough time to get out of the way before it landed it with their feet with a loud _splat,_ where it immediately vanished in a hissing cloud of smoke. Aethyta, who flat-out refused to be rattled by anything, could only think about taking diluted thresher spit and creating some sort of alcoholic beverage from it. Fortunately, the ground they were on consisted of several feet of reinforced concrete, and this prevented the thresher maw from simply burrowing up from underneath and devouring them. But they were still exposed with very little cover from the thresher maw's acidic onslaught.

There seemed to be no hope of slaying the foul creature – up to this point Shepard had only fought thresher maws from inside the Mako – until he realised that he still had the M-920 Cain with him. "Get to cover!" he shouted as he unslung the Cain. Somehow Grunt was able to contain his bloodlust and, instead of attempting to kill the thresher maw in hand-to-hand combat, actually got into cover as ordered. The Cain took several seconds to charge up, during which time the thresher maw let out another glob of acid spit that Shepard just barely managed to avoid. A few stinging drops spattered against his face, but with the Cain requiring two hands to hold, he couldn't wipe them away.

The Cain fired with its distinctive _thoomp_ noise, and a split-second later the thresher maw disappeared in a blinding white flash. The blast threw Shepard back a good thirty feet or so, while his comrades who took cover fared slightly better, although the explosion had thrown up a massive cloud of dust that that covered them all in a thick layer. His ears were ringing and for a moment he was almost completely deaf, but for the most part he was unharmed. The same could not be said of the thresher maw, of which there was no trace, save for the burning chunks of flesh that were raining down all around them. The Cain had completely obliterated the head of the thresher maw, and only the subterranean segment of its body remained.

"Goddess, Shepard!" Aethyta, frantically dusting herself off. "At least _warn_ us before you break out that thing!"

Grunt, as everyone had quickly come to expect, thought that this was the funniest thing he had ever seen, and he ran around picking up burnt pieces of thresher flesh and taking bites out of them. He knew enough about the krogan to guess that there was a good chance that this behaviour was not exactly unusual.

While the rest of them waited to catch their breath, Gatatog Uvenk and his lackeys emerged from below. All of them were armed, a sign that their struggle was not over yet. Nearly everyone in Wrex's camp had felt the massive explosion from the Cain, and they were eager to see just what had happened above ground. No one could have expected to find a dead thresher maw, however.

"You live," Uvenk muttered, as if Grunt had been doomed to failure from the start. "No one has brought down a thresher maw since Wrex himself. This will cause discussion."

"What are barking about, Uvenk?" Grunt retorted, gripping tightly to his shotgun.

"You say you pure, that there is no alien meddling in your genes? If so, then you are perhaps more useful than I imagined. I would offer you a place within Clan Gatatog, although you'll have to get rid of your asari nanny first, and you would be denied breeding rights."

Shepard was in absolutely no mood for this sort of thing. "You speak as if he's a 'thing.' I don't think you really want him in your clan; you just want him for his strength."

Uvenk waved his hand. "Of course we don't want him! I had no desire to ally Clan Gatatog with Clan Urdnot, either, but it was either that or join the hundreds of clans that have fallen by the wayside."

Grunt was, understandably, not very impressed with Uvenk's offer. "You spat on my father's name, on Shepard's name, _and_ my mum's name!" he roared, making it clear that it was the last item on his list that was most unforgivable. "But now you stop barking now that I've proven my strength?"

Shepard opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything half of Uvenk's head disappeared in a shower of orange blood, very much like Shepard's encounter with the krogan bounty hunter on Illium. His lifeless body crumpled to the ground while his lackeys looked on in stunned silence.

Aethyta ejected the spent thermal clip from her shotgun. "His 'nanny' am I? Nobody talks about my boy that way!"

He expected a fight with Uvenk's men, but their loyalty to him was rather tenuous. "I never liked him, anyway," said one of them. "Let's go get some thresher steaks. I heard they go good with ryncol."

* * *

When they returned to the Urdnot camp, everyone was talking about their killing of the thresher maw and how it would supply enough meat for them to feast on for weeks afterwards. As a symbol of having completed his rite of passage, the chief shaman presented grunt with an enormous shotgun that, to Shepard's eyes, like more like a large brick with a handle than an actual weapon. It was quite similar in design as Aethyta's weapon was, which was hardly surprising given that they were both krogan weapons and that the krogan hadn't updated the the design philosophy of their weapons ("Bigger is _always_ better; no exceptions!") in millennia.

"A thresher maw dead, along with my most vocal opponent," Wrex mused. "You just can't help causing trouble, Shepard, though I think the quarian is partly to blame. We've heard rumours on Tuchanka that she once blew up a star."

"That wasn't me," she protested. "That was entirely Prazza's fault, and the fault of the people who made our mineral scanner!"

"I don't care what happened; chaos follows her like a hungry varren. But I think that will only help you in the end, Shepard. I say, if I mission doesn't end with a huge explosion, then your mission is a failure."

With their business on Tuchanka concluded, they returned to _Normandy,_ where Shepard was eager to take a shower to rid himself of all the grime and dirt that had accumulated over his body. After a few hours on the dusty, sun-baked wasteland of the krogan homeworld, the cold, sterile walls of the _Normandy_ were like a breath of fresh air. It wasn't until he sat down at his private to check his inbox that he received a rather unpleasant surprise, in the form of an email from someone calling herself "_Your Lover." _The message itself read:

_MY BODY ACHES FOR YOU!_

_ Days and nights I lay awake thinking of the moment when we will finally be together. They call me mad for desiring a human, but what do they know could know – what COULD they know – about the depths of my passion and desire? When you first set foot on that ship and I caught my first glimpse of you, I knew then that we were destined for one another. Yes, that we belong to different species is an obstacle, but one that I am certain we shall overcome! LOVE WILL BRING US TOGETHER!_

_ I want you, Shepard. I want to make love to you for hours and hours until both of us lie spent in my bed. I want to make love to you every night for the rest of my life. I want everyone to know that our love is strong and unbreakable. No one else in the galaxy knows you like I do, Shepard. No one else can satisfy your needs, your desires, your PASSIONS like I can. And the time when we will be finally be united is coming soon, my love!_

_Your eternal lover_

Thinking that this was merely the output from some deranged admirer of his, he moved the message to his trash bin and switched off his private terminal. The ordeal on Tuchanka had left him with a rather strong thirst for a stiff drink, so he headed down to the crew deck, hoping to have some time to unwind before the next crisis came along. There he found Joker standing over the galley counter, looking down at a bowl of what Shepard could only guess was some sort of stew.

"Uh, what is this, again?" Joker asked, looking quite repulsed at what he was seeing.

Mess Sergeant Gardner looked offended that someone might not recognise and acknowledge his culinary skill. "For the last time, it's a stew based on a turian recipe that's supposed to be all the rage these days. Damned if I know what's so great about it!"

"You _do _know that humans can't eat turian food, right? Like it'll tear apart our insides and all that?"

"Of course I know that! I substituted some of the ingredients with things us humans might actually like, like tofu."

Not much in the mood for Mess Sergeant Gardner's "experiments" in cuisine, Shepard steered himself over towards Aethyta's bar, where she was busy downing a bottle of some no doubt expensive asari liquor. It was clear that she was more than a little tipsy, although he figured that she'd earned it after helping Grunt through his rite of passage.

"I'm so proud of him, Shepard! I knew Grunt would get through his rite without any trouble. And Uvenk! That's how you deal with assholes like him – wait until they least expect, then kick em' in the quad! Or shoot em' in the face, that works too."

"Let's just hope it calms him down a little. I don't need him bashing up the cargo hold."

"He says that that was just because he had all this stuff pent up inside of him from his time in the tank." She then glanced left and right, making sure that no one was within earshot. "You know, Shepard, there...there's been something I've been meaning to get off my chest for a while. Maybe it's just 'cause I'm drunk, but I feel like I can trust you, like you wouldn't judge me. That...that's a rare thing."

"I'll listen to whatever you have to say, Aethyta." He paused for a second. "Is this going to have something to do with sex or alcohol?"

She laughed. "No, not this time. Well, actually, sex and alcohol _were_ the cause of it, I guess. See, did I ever tell you about how I once had a pureblood daughter?"

He tried to remember that particular conversation, which now seemed like ages ago. "You said something about it not working out?"

"Yeah, guess that was the understatement of the year, huh? And did I ever tell you who my daughter's mother was?"

"I don't remember you telling me, no."

She backed away from the bar, looking around once more to make sure there was no one nearby that might overhear them. "Well, there's a reason for that, and it's because my partner was Matriarch Benezia."

His jaw dropped. "Are you telling me you're Liara T'Soni's other parent?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm saying," she said, taking another swig from the bottle. "Me and Benezia had a little 'fling'. Well, I guess was more than a fling, actually. You _do_ understand that at the time I was hip-deep into a bottle...several bottles...of liquor at the time, and my memory of it isn't all that great."

"Well I suppose this all explains why you were working in a bar right next to Liara's office. But why didn't you stay to help raise her? Why did you run away?"

"I don't know, I guess I just panicked. You don't know how they treat purebloods on Thessia, Shepard. These days I wouldn't give a damn what someone thought, but a hundred years ago I was mortified at what people might say about a matriarch who had a pureblood daughter. So yes, I ran away. I'm not trying to say what I did was right, just why I did it."

"Still, why didn't you ever try to contact her? I mean her office was literally right next door!"

She shrugged. "And what would that accomplish? Liara's done perfectly well for herself without me; how it would do her any favours if she learned her 'father' was working as a bartender because she was laughed off of every world in the Asari Republics?"

"And now you can tell her that you're on a mission to save the galaxy. I don't think Liara is the sort of person who would judge you, Aethyta."

"Maybe you're right...it's pretty sad that you know her so much better than I do. Tell you what, Shepard. If we ever stop on Illium again, then I'll...I'll speak with her. But if we end up hurling our biotic abilities at each other, I'm blaming you!"


	13. Legion of Awesome

Chapter 13 – Legion of Awesome

* * *

It was the general opinion of the forces of the universe that Tali'Zorah was not suffering enough.

Sure, they had let her have her fun for a while, giving her a chance to confess her feelings to Shepard and all that, but now that time was over. In the past they had tormented her with an incompetent crew that blundered into one catastrophe after the other, then it had killed her father and revealed to her all the terrible things he had been a part of. This time, however, the universe had devised an entirely new method making her suffer. It would force her to work alongside a geth, her most hated enemy, and it would cackle in delight at how horrible it would be for her to be stuck in such a situation.

Before that happened, Tali was treated the strange sight of a quarian-built stealth ship. It belonged to a group calling themselves the Black Guard, who claimed to be admiral Xen's own private special forces. They also claimed that they had been ordered by Hvenna'Tor to kill Shepard, but refused to carry out their orders. Instead they wanted to talk, although naturally Shepard didn't take any chances and had their weapons confiscated at the airlock. It was their ship that was of particular interest to Tali, as it was not a sleek and refined ship like the _Normandy_, but rather a vessel that looked as though it was suffering from a severe case of bloat. The heatsinks required to store the thermal emissions were inelegantly attached, sandwiched between the ship's original hull and a new outer hull that was added on to the vessel's structure. The end result was a ship that was ugly even by the standards of the Migrant Fleet.

The members of the Black Guard themselves were certainly striking in their appearance. Their suits were pure black, and not even a glossy black, either. No, it was as if light just fell into then, resulting in a rather unnerving look to them. The suits also disguised the fact that they were quarians completely, down to have five fingers on their gloves and heavy armour plating on their lower legs to disguise the distinctive backwards-curving quarian shins. It was impossible to tell their gender, although Tali suspected that the one individual who was nearly seven feet and looked to be made out of pure muscle was probably male.

Her presence alongside Shepard did not appear to help ease tensions. "Oh no," she heard of them say, "not her! She'll doom us all!"

"Enough with the superstition, you twit!" one of them hissed.

"But she blew up a _star..."_

"I said shut it!"

While the destruction of that star had technically been Prazza's fault, Tali had come to accept the fact that she was going to get blamed for it regardless. "You must excuse my comrades, commander," said the tall man. "Admiral Xen would have people believe that we're some sort of highly-trained special forces, but we're really more like thugs."

One of them did not take too kindly to this remark. "Hey! I am _not_ a thug!"

The huge man ignored his protest. "Admiral Xen is the commander of our little group, but we were sent to kill you under the orders of Hvenna'Tor, the head researcher at our base. Admiral Xen would have a heart attack if she found out."

Shepard frowned. "Why?"

Another member of the Black Guard spoke, this one a woman. "Daro is in love with you, Shepard. I mean, to an_ insane_ degree. She's hoping that you'll find her little research base so that she can capture and seduce you."

"She's been posting all sorts of erotic stories about you on the extranet," said another of the quarians. "I...wouldn't go looking for them, if I were you. They're gross."

Shepard took a step back, a mixture of both horror and confusion on his face. "What? I barely even spoke to the woman."

"Maybe so," said the female quarian, "but you're not exactly an unknown in the galaxy, Shepard. She's probably been in love with you ever that since that movie about you came out."

He froze. "Wait, they made a movie about me?"

"Yeah, it raked in loads of creds but the critics hated it. Said the actor who played you was too stiff and that the romance between you and Liara was forced."

"Of course it was forced," he said with a scowl. "Liara and I were just friends."

"Well who else are they going to put you together with?"

"All right, enough!" said the large quarian. "We're planning on letting it slip to Daro that Hvenna has ordered your assassination. She'll be furious with him, and with any luck they won't

find out that we were behind it."

Another one spoke up."Her base is near the star you humans call Eta Carinae. We don't know what exactly the admiral is doing there, but it can't be good."

"I know," said Shepard. "She's trying to fuse the human body with geth platforms. I don't know why."

None of the quarians said anything for a second. "That's...strangely predictable," said the woman.

"Just watch out for Daro'Xen, commander," said the large quarian. "Whatever she's got planned for you, it cannot be pleasant. Well, maybe it is, I don't know. She sounds like she's into some pretty kinky things."

That the admiral could be in love with Shepard was both disconcerting and comforting to Tali. Disconcerting that someone could be so obsessed with him, and yet comforting in that Tali now knew that she wasn't the only quarian in existence who was attracted to a human.

The quarian soldiers departed, but the crew of the _Normandy_ was not going to be acting on their information immediately. A few hours later Shepard called the team to the meeting room to discuss their next mission, a mission that was would be both horrifying and strangely fascinating.

"I've just had a little talk with our 'friend' the Illusive Man," he said, laying his hands on the table. "He's got something that well let us pass through the Omega-4 relay without flying into the black hole on the other hand. The only catch is, this thing we need? It's on board a derelict Reaper."

The meeting room fell silent, although everything was certain that this mission would be a horror show immediately after Shepard said the word "derelict." "Apparently the Reapers and the Collectors use an Identify Friend/Foe system that triggers the relays to use more precise transiting protocols. That's how the Collectors are able to pass through the Omega-4 relay. According the Illusive Man, he had a team working on board the Reaper to recover the IFF, but he's since lost contact. Given Cerberus' track record with this sort of thing, I think it's safe to assume that they're all dead by now."

"How did they find a derelict Reaper?" Garrus asked.

"It was hit by an enormous mass accelerator 37 million years, which 'killed' it. Since then its 'corpse' has been sitting in the atmosphere of the brown dwarf Mnemosyne. Cerberus just happened to be the first to stumble upon it."

Zaeed laughed. "Figures. There ain't nothing in this galaxy that doesn't die if you shoot it with a big enough gun."

"But just because it's a derelict ship doesn't mean this mission won't be dangerous. Does anyone know the first rule of salvage operations in deep space?"

Miranda answered first. "There are no salvage operations in deep space, commander. Only a second wave of victims."

"Exactly. We don't know what happened to the Cerberus research team. Maybe the Reaper has some sort of automated internal defences. Maybe they were indoctrinated. Whatever happened, we aren't going to be taking any chances."

Tali didn't know it yet, but when she set foot on board that derelict Reaper, she would be altering the very course of her entire species. No one in the _Normandy_ was aware of the single geth platform making its way through the Reaper's innards, blowing away the husk-ified Cerberus research team, which would make things quite a bit easier for Shepard and his team when they arrived. Since killing husks required only a fraction of its total processing power, this geth had dedicated a portion of the platforms running on its hardware to playing _Galaxy of Fantasy._ It had been playing continuously for the past three weeks, having its player character level grind to the point where it outclassed nearly every other character on the server. As the server admins did not believe that anyone could grind for so long, they slapped the geth with a permanent ban.

* * *

Given that this was quite possibility their most dangerous yet, they were going in with a large team. Samara and Miranda would be their biotic force, with Garrus and Grunt handling the heavy weapons, and Tali and Kasumi being the tech squad. At present, they were all crowded into the cockpit of the _Normandy_ as Joker piloted the ship into into the upper atmosphere of the brown dwarf. Mere moments later the ship shuddered as it hit the near-supersonic winds of Mnemosyne, enough to throw several people to the floor. Joker laughed and remembered why one was supposed to remain seated during atmospheric entry.

As they descended deeper into the atmosphere the buffeting lessened until it stopped altogether rather suddenly. "What just happened?" Shepard asked.

EDI answered him. "The Reaper's mass effect field is still active, creating a region free of the turbulence surrounding it."

That would explain why the derelict vessel had not yet fallen into the lower atmosphere of the brown dwarf and been crushed into little tiny Reaper bits. Unfortunately that also meant the Reaper still had power, which made Tali wonder just how "derelict" it really was. She was under no illusion that this was going to be a simple operation.

"EDI, any sign that the Reaper's indoctrination field is still active? I don't want to have us all turning into mindless zombies once we're over there."

"I have no means of detecting the presence of any indoctrination field, however, given that indoctrination usually requires several days to take effect, it is doubtful that you will suffer any major ill effects from your brief exposure."

Tali did not find that reassuring at all.

Then they saw the Reaper hulk emerge from the swirling red mists of Mnemosyne. Every one gathered around the cockpit window to look at it, and from what they could see its design was quite similar to that of Sovereign, with a long tapering tail and several "claws" attached to the front. Several large holes had been blasted in the hull; evidently this Reaper was the victim of several impacts from a mass accelerator of incredible power.

"It looks like a big giant lobster," Kasumi quipped. "A big giant lobster that hates people."

"I'm picking up another ship alongside the Reaper," Joker said. "It's not responding to our IFF interrogate signal, but the ladar paints its silhouette as geth!"

That just made things worse, didn't it? Tali thought. Not that this came as a surprise to her any more. "Guess that explains what happened to the Cerberus research team."

Joker skilfully manoeuvred the ship into docking position next to the Reaper, which utterly dwarfed the _Normandy._ Waiting in the airlock, Tali could do little except fidget nervously. She would lying if she said the coming mission did not frighten her; who _wouldn't_ be terrified of setting foot inside the corpse of some malevolent being that was millions (perhaps more) years old? At the same time she could not deny her curiosity at just what they might find within. As an engineer by trade, how could pass up the opportunity to study a ship far more powerful and advanced than anything in the galaxy?

"Far from it me for to dictate what you wear on missions, Miranda," said Shepard, "but don't you think stiletto shoes are a bit unsuitable for combat?"

"They're not just for show, Shepard. The heels contain small mass effect fields generators that allow me to fly for brief periods of time."

"You...you're joking, right?"

"I never joke, commander."

The airlock opened with a loud _hiss,_ revealing an empty hallway leading into the Cerberus facility. Like the other research bases Tali had seen, this one had the Cerberus insignia placed absolutely everywhere (she did not know that Cerberus regulations required the organisation's logo to placed every twenty feet along the walls). There were no corpses to be seen or any signs that there had been a fight, suggesting that the geth were not responsible for whatever had happened to the research team. But Tali could handle geth. A horde of indoctrinated slaves was something else entirely.

"I'll access the research logs," said Miranda, walking over to one of the computer consoles. Everyone was tense, even combat veterans like Garrus and Samara, and all of them were expecting something horrible to jump out at them at any second. Tali felt comforted by the fact that the seven of them could unleash a hellish torrent of firepower and biotic might at a moment's notice.

Miranda quickly scrolled through the research logs, most of which said nothing interesting until she got to the logs from the past couple of days. The first was from one Dr. Chandana, who was the head of the Cerberus research team.

_"We've pressurised the interior of the Reaper and begun preparations for shirtsleeves work. The team is nervous, no doubt fearful of what this hulk represents. They've begun calling it 'Mecha-Cthulu,' which has not helped matters at all. So far we've managed to remove most of the hulk's main components including what appears to be its central memory core, the IFF, and along with what appears to be the voice modulator. It's what gives all audio communications from Reapers that awesome flanged, mechanical tone. We could reverse engineer it and make millions selling it on the open market."_

She skipped ahead to the next audio log, this one from one of the technicians. _"Two days with this headache, and none of the meds have helped a whit. And everyone's been acting so strange lately."_

There was another voice on the recording. _"It's the indoctrination, I'm sure of it! I warned em', but did they listen? Nooooo..."_

_ "Pshaw! That's your explanation for everything! 'Why won't the Council believe in the Reaper threat?' 'They're indoctrinated!' 'Why isn't the Alliance doing anything? 'Oh, they must be indoctrinated!" Hell, I bet when you find out your wife's been sleeping with me, you'll blame _that_ on indoctrination too!"_

_ "You...what?"_

_ "Oh, I guess you don't know about that yet, huh?"_

The last log entry clearly indicated the research team's mental decline. _"We all came here thinking we'd be salvaging the remains of some ancient starship. But what we found was a god! Not just any god, but MECHA-CTHULU! The others, they think I'm crazy, but they don't know the truth! I'll show them! I'll show them all! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!"_

This was then followed by a long "devotion" to their god: _"Oh great Mecha-Cthulu, thou art god. We entreat thee with awe, that thou mayest blow thine enemies to little bitty pieces, that thoy mayest smite thy foes into a fine, gruel-like paste, that thou mayest explode thy adversies into blossoms of gore and bloody chunks, that thou mayest..."_ It went on like this

While this might have seemed like a rather typical outcome for any Cerberus project, the fact was that the fate that had befallen this research outpost was not nearly as horrible or as destructive as what had happened with Project Lazarus or with Project Overlord. In fact, this was quite possibly the most successful Cerberus project to date by the exceedingly low standards they had set. Not that the huskified research team would be any condition to celebrate, of course.

There was another airlock, this one leading into the interior of the Reaper itself. Since Reapers presumably were not constructed with crew accommodations in mind (and they would likely consider a bunch of lesser creatures crawling about inside them to be "icky"), the Cerberus team had set up walkways and platforms over the more treacherous sections of the derelict ship. This area was reached through another airlock, where there were several charred bodies on the floor.

No sooner had they stepped past the airlock then the whole ship shuddered, followed by the sound of power surging through its innards. "Uh, commander," came Joker's voice over the radio, "the Reaper just put up kinetic barriers. I don't think you'll be able to get back out from your side."

Shepard let out a few select curse words. "Some sort of defence mechanism?" Tali wondered aloud.

EDI, as she so often did, had a solution to their dilemma. "The Reaper's kinetic barriers are likely powered by its mass effect core. Destroying it should deactivate them, however, doing so will cause the ship to fall into the brown dwarf's atmosphere."

"And so it'll be a mad scramble to get back to the _Normandy_ before the Reaper implodes, right?"

"Correct."

"Well if any pilot can get us out of here in time, it's Joker. Now let's move!"

Now they had their first glimpse of the inside of a Reaper. Tali remembered hearing about how the walls and ceilings on board Sovereign were oppressive and suffocating, serving to weaken the will of anyone inside it, and it was no different aboard this vessel. All the angles seemed to be precisely the _wrong_ angles, making the interior appear both cavernous and cramped at the same time. Endless lengths of power conduits ran along the ceiling like veins and capillaries, doing nothing to dispel the feeling that they were insects crawling about the carcass of some long dead creature. A thick mist hung in the air, and Tali kept her suit's olfactory switched off. She couldn't imagine what the interior of a Reaper would smell like, and she had no desire to find out.

With the Reaper's mass effect field shielding it from the high-velocity winds of the brown dwarf, everything stood eerily silent, which could only mean that there was something horrible quietly creeping about in the shadows, waiting for the moment to strike. Everyone kept their hands firmly on their weapons, and the tension in the air was so thick that you could almost reach out and grab a piece of it. Only Grunt appeared relatively unperturbed; Tali guessed that he was probably spoiling for a good fight, as always. No one dared speak, lest they attract the attention of whatever biomechanical abominations were surely lurking in the darkness.

Prior to boarding, EDI had run a scan of the ship and determined that the IFF was conveniently located somewhere near the Reaper's mass effect core. That was quite fortuitous for the team, as it led them away from a indescribable, mind-buggering horror that was lurking in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, their present course was leading them towards a throng of husks that had climbed up onto the platform and were now blindly rushing them towards. Whatever was left of their minds was set on one thing: clobbering anyone in sight. Unfortunately for them, the narrow walkway meant that their numbers were useless.

Everyone opened fire simultaneously, and the silence of the derelict Reaper became a deafening cacophony of gunfire, explosions, and the _whoosh_ of biotic powers being used. Husks were blasted apart, blown to pieces, or thrown into a wall. A little-known fact was the Reapers were capable of coordinating and controlling husks _en masse,_ but that part of the derelict Reaper's mind was decayed that the only orders it could issue to its husk army was, "Umm, yeah, could you kill those people over there? I mean, I don't want to seem like a slave driver or anything, but they're really not supposed to be there and I want you to get rid of them. Don't strain your minds too hard or anything like that. Not that you _could_, of course, I mean, you _are _just mindless husks, after all. Guess I can't really expect too much from you."

As Tali loaded another thermal clip into her shotgun, she figured that fight would be over soon. She reckoned that the Cerberus research team was relatively small, and if they had all been transformed into husks that meant they're couldn't be many more of them. But the waves didn't stop coming. To their horror another group of husks dropped down from the ceiling, seemingly out of nowhere, and charged towards them, making that awful groaning noise. To make matters worse, another wave of husks was approaching from behind, having also seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

"You've got to be kidding me," said Shepard, reloading his Revenant. "Where the hell are all they all _coming _from?" He then released a sustained burst of gunfire, his weapon loaded with incendiary rounds, which cut down the approaching husks in a fiery maelstrom.

"I call bullshit on this!" he exclaimed as soon as the attacks stopped. "That last wave clearly appeared out of thin air! How is that possible?"

"Some sort of Reaper technology, no doubt," Garrus said. "If they can make enemies appear out of nowhere, our battles are going to get tiresome rather quickly."

Despite all this they carried onwards, and less than five seconds later they were confronted with yet another wave of husks shambling towards them. They raised their weapons, but before any of them could get off even a single round a loud shot rang out, and a split-second later one of the husks was blown away. A second shot quickly followed the first, splattering another husk against the wall. The biomechanical zombies, not knowing which of their attackers they should trying to clobber to death, decided that the best thing they could do was leap over the railing and into the abyss below.

"A sniper, it seems," said Garrus. "I didn't get a look at the shooter. One of the research team, perhaps?"

Not knowing if the sniper were friendly or not, they advanced cautiously into the room, which looked to be a hub or nexus of some sort. A vast array of snake-like power conduits came together into a large, monolithic slab, the purpose of which Tali could only guess at. The indoctrinated research team had turned this place into some sort of shrine, with a makeshift "altar" constructed from cargo containers. The room was filled with Dragon's Teeth, the colloquial name for what were properly termed "portable huskification devices."

With little they could do for the unfortunate research team, they continued onwards. According to her omni-tool, they were approaching the aftmost section of the Reaper corpse, along the ship's tapering tail section. This was roughly equivalent to the engineering section of a more familiar class of vessel, and Tali would be lying to herself is she didn't admit that she found the idea of investigating the propulsion system of a Reaper to be quite intriguing. She imagined that it would be far more advanced than anything any other race had developed, and while it went against her better judgement, she could not help but think of how much the salvage from this wreck could benefit the Migrant Fleet. A quarian salvage could strip this thing bare in less than a week, taking everything of value and leaving nothing behind except a bare skeleton of a spaceship. But Tali knew enough about Reaper technology to know that meddling with it often had horrific consequences. The Reapers had predicted that organic lifeforms would attempt to use their technology, and so every component of every Reaper, right down the most basic devices, was designed to work against any organic who attempted to use it.

Unfortunately, neither Shepard nor any of his team knew that the Reaper IFF was just such a device.

The hull had been breached in this area, rather severely, in fact, as a large section of the Reaper had been blown away, revealing the turbulent atmosphere of the brown dwarf, and it was only the Reaper's mass effect field keeping a breathable atmosphere inside the ship. Looking out of the gaping hole, it was very much like being in the midst of the eye of a hurricane. Of course, hurricanes on the quarian homeworld tended to be a fair bit more intense than those on Earth.

A shot rang out, breaking her from his thoughts. At first she thought they were under attack, yet the target of the shot was not one of their team, but one of a group of husks that had silently crept up behind them. While they took cover, several more shots were fired, each one striking a husk squarely between the eyes. She glanced out from behind a pillar to get a look at their attacker, fully expecting to find some half-crazed (or more likely fully-crazed) member of the Cerberus research team, but instead she found herself staring into glowing single eye of a geth. It would have looked indistinguishable from the hundreds of geth platforms she had encountered during her life, were it not for the gaping hole in its chest, which had been patched over with a piece of N7 armour. Tali's instinctive reaction was to draw her gun and shoot, but before she could pull the trigger the geth looked down at Shepard and _spoke._

"Shepard-Commander."

Every one of the group was on the brink of filling the geth with ten times its own weight of lead, but the fact that it was capable of speech stunned them all into inaction, giving the geth enough time to walk away.

"Did it just talk?" said Garrus, astounded at what he had just seen. "Since when do geth talk to us meatbags?"

"It...it shouldn't able to talk," Tali said. "A single platform doesn't have the processing power to!"

"Maybe this one's different?" suggested Shepard. "I think it just saved our lives back there. Why would it do that?"

Garrus shrugged. "Maybe it's a friendly geth. You know, a rebel trying to throw off the evil reputation of its kin? Sort of like those graphic novels they published on Thessia a while back ago about that Ardat-Yakshi...what was her name?"

Shepard had the answer, strangely enough. "Drizzella," he said. "She dressed in black leather and dual-wielded Carnifex pistols, fighting for justice wherever she went, despite the terrible reputation of her kind. I read all the issues as a kid. Awesome stuff."

Though she would never admit to anyone, Samara happened to possess every issue of this comic book series as well, although she never referred to it as anything but a "graphic novel." This particular series of "graphic novels" was originally intended by its author to be a one-off publication, but pressure from the publisher forced her to continue writing them, leading to her to declare that she should have killed of Drizzella years ago. It also led to the rather unfortunate situation of thousand upon thousands of _Galaxy of Fantasy_ players deciding to make their characters thinly-veiled knock-offs of Drizella.

But that was neither here nor there.

"I don't like the look of this," Garrus said quietly as they advanced deeper into the bowels of the Reaper (although "bowels" wasn't the word Tali would have used). "We should have brought more guns."

Tali sighed at the turian's antics. "That's what you always say! We've brought enough firepower to handle anything we might face."

"You don't understand, Tali. There is no such thing as 'enough guns.' The concept just doesn't exist. Even if you could have enough guns, that would still be fewer guns than what you _should_ have. And the amount of guns you _should_ have is _still_ not enough guns. Is any of this getting through that helmet of yours?"

It turned out that Garrus's request for more guns was wholly unnecessary, as the geth was packing enough firepower to blast its way through the horde of husks ahead. They could hear the sounds of gunfire as the geth's monstrous Widow sniper rifle fired again and again, and with its perfectly-calculated aim not a single shot was wasted. It was strong enough to fire the massive rifle in one hand, while carrying a Revenant machine gun in the other, and it never _ever_ missed with either.

"Well it's certainly making things easy for us,"Shepard quipped. Ahead lay the corpses of what had to be hundreds of husks, along with an even more grotesque creation that was dubbed the "scion," as it was made from two husks fused together. The geth had actually put its thermal clips over capacity before facing the monstrosity, and so it had brought down the scion simply by punching it really, really hard.

Tali was in a dreadful state of confusion over all this. She had never heard of the geth ever attempting to communicate with organics; not since the geth had first asked its quarian overseer questions about its existence. And this had to be the first time she had encountered a geth that was not trying to kill her. There had to be an explanation for it. Perhaps this was a more advanced platform – one with sufficient processing power to be capable of speech. During her time on the first _Normandy_ she had encountered geth platforms that were of an unknown design, hinting at the evolution of the geth as a whole. Obviously this particular platform they were dealing with was yet another example of their evolution.

There remained the question of its non-hostility. The geth worshipped the Reapers, so it was hardly surprising to find one here, but this one had made no attempt to attack organics, and was in fact fighting against the Reaper's servants. Why? They weren't going to find the answer just standing around, so the seven of them pressed onward past the piles upon piles of dead husks and other abominations.

At last they reached the engine room (or rather, the closest equivalent to an engine room). The chamber itself had been rendered inaccessible due to a large hull breach in that area, so the Cerberus team had constructed a passageway between the engine room and the section of the Reaper they were now standing in. It was inside this passage that they located the IFF, which was a fair bit smaller than Tali expected. The device was little more than a small circuit board and could easily be carried in one hand. Next to the IFF was a datapad, displaying one of the researcher's notes on it:

_The IFF, as its name suggests, identifies a spacecraft as being either of Reaper or Collector manufacture during a pass through a mass relay. Prior to transit through a relay, it transmits an encrypted "handshake" signal to the relay, signalling it to use more sophisticated transit protocols that allow for a much greater degree in precision. The encryption algorithm is far more sophisticated than anything we've encountered, which is hardly surprising given that it is Reaper technology. Nevertheless, I am confident that with Cerberus' AI technology we will have the encryption cracked within a year, if not sooner._

Below that entry was a comment by another research:

_I don't know what sort of illegal substances you've been ingesting, Bob, but I'm pretty sure this is *not* a Reaper IFF. *My* analysis clearly indicates that this is, in fact, a device for infusing the dried leaves of _camellia sinensis_ with hot water. In other words, it makes tea._

The previous researcher had made a rather scathing response to this:

_Is this some sort of joke, Carl? Really? A device for making tea? Why would a Reaper ever have such a device on board? I know you're pissy and all because I got to promoted to team lead instead of you, but that's no excuse for this sort of juvenile behaviour._

And yet another response:

_If you had paid any attention during the last team meeting, you'd know that we ran tests on the device and discovered that did indeed produce very nice cups of both English Breakfast and Earl Grey tea. I don't know how it synthesised the tea leaves or the hot water, but obviously this is an example of highly-advanced Reaper technology for beyond our understanding._

"There's something else here, Shepard," said Tali. "It looks like another audio log from one of the researchers." She quickly downloaded the audio file into her omni-tool and began playing it.

_"Everyone here has gone crazy!" _came a frantic voice. _"Dr. Chandana started 'speaking' to the parts he extracted from the Reaper's memory core yesterday, and today he said that now they're speaking back to him! He...he said they were telling him to do these...these horrible things. And now Banks had started going around wearing a bucket over his head, Bob won't stop screaming the lyrics to 'Sumer is icumen in,' and Reynolds is insisting that his body is now made from finely-aged Gouda cheese. It must the Reaper's indoctrination field; it must be still active! Now they're coming for me...oh god, what am I going to do?"_ There was then the sound of a loud explosion on the recording. _"Oh man, oh god...oh man, oh god, oh man...oh god, oh man, OH GOD!"_

"Sounds like he was losing his mind like the rest of them," Shepard said flatly.

"Either that, or he was having a very passionate debate with himself between theism and humanism." Kasumi added with a chuckle.

Shepard looked down at his gun. "We're running low on thermal clips. That little firefight earlier seriously strained our supply, you know. I don't blame you guys or anything; I like firing guns as much as the next man, but maybe we should have practised some fire control back there. It's quite possible the room up ahead is crawling with husks, just like the rest of this damned ship."

"So what do we do, chief?" Garrus asked.

"We improvise. Husks are part synthetic; so I'm guessing they're vulnerable to overload attacks. And we've still got biotics, I might add. And if worst to comes to worst, we fight hand-to-hand. Tali and I have our combat knives, Grunt's got his, uh, hands, and Kasumi, well, you can use your katana or something."

She put her hands to her hips. "Now _that's_ offensive! You assume that just because I'm Japanese, that I happen to have a katana!"

"Well, uh, I'm sorry-"

"Besides, I left my katana on the _Normandy. _Sheesh."

They took the IFF (at least, Tali _hoped_ it was the IFF and not a device for making tea) and pressed onwards into the engine room, fully expecting it to be filled with husks. However, what they saw instead was a pile of dead husks nearly twenty feet high, the handiwork of the single geth platform that was now attempting to access a control console. Unfortunately, one of the husks had survived the geth's assault and was now making its way towards it. The geth didn't sense it approaching, being far too engrossed with whatever it was doing to notice. The husk bashed the geth in its "head" with enough force to knock it offline. The husk had little time to celebrate, however (were it capable of such a thing), as Miranda used her biotics to lift it off its feet and smash it against the floor.

After climbing over the mountain of dead husks, Tali approached the console, wondering why a Reaper would have such a thing installed in the first place. Did they have their indoctrinated servants perform maintenance inside them?

"Any idea what that geth was trying to do?" Shepard asked, looking down at the inactive platform lying in a heap on the ground.

The Reapers apparently used a simple command line interface, which was wholly surprising given their whole "we are beyond your comprehension" routine. She looked over the geth's last commands:

_:~$ su _

_Password:_

_:~# ps ux_

_USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND_

_root 3064 0.1 3.6 18324 9088 ? S 17:55 0:00 /usr/bin/scary-voice-modulator_

_root 3107 0.0 0.3 3128 968 ? S 17:55 0:00 /usr/bin/direct-control-assumer_

_root 3130 0.0 0.6 3584 1696 ? S 17:55 0:00 xscreensaver -nosplash_

It went on listing the various running processes, until Tali noticed one in particular:

_root 3216 0.2 3.1 12788 7844 ? S 17:56 0:00 /usr/bin/don't-kill-this-it-will-blow-up-the-drive-core-you-fool_

_:~# kill -9 3216_

The last command had been typed in but not yet entered. "It looks like the geth was trying to destroy the Reaper's drive core, probably for the same reason we are."

"I hope it was waiting until we were ready to leave," Garrus added. "It looks like the drive core on this thing is pretty heavily shielded; I don't think we'll be able to blast through it with conventional weaponry."

The actual drive core loomed above them, looking a bit like a giant clam-shell (thus continuing the general impression that the Reapers and their constructs looked like seafood). Inside was an element zero core that was no doubt worth billions of credits, and Tali only wished there were some way of salvaging of it for the flotilla without the danger of the Reaper's indoctrination field. She did not know it (and could not know it, because he was dead), but Prazza's greatly-superior-yet-inferior mind was, in fact, immune to indoctrination. Unfortunately, an army of Prazzas would have been only slightly less destructive than a Reaper fleet, so this avenue of research was futile.

"I can blow the drive core; all it takes is entering the geth's last command," she said. "But we'll never make it back to the _Normandy_ before the ship falls into the planet's atmosphere!"

Shepard radioed back to the ship. "EDI, we need another way off this hulk. Is there any place closer you can pick us up?"

EDI only needed a few seconds to perform a complete scan of the Reaper's hull. "There is hull breach approximately fifty metres from your position. Marking the location to your hardsuit computer."

"All right. Tali, let's blow this thing's engine core to hell! The rest of you, get your masks on."

She entered the geth's final command, fully expecting there to be some loud explosion from the drive core. Rather disappointingly, there was only a loud shower of sparks and a slight shudder, as if the universe were telling Tali, "Sorry, you've already used up your quota of massive explosions for this year. You're not getting anything more from us." A second later the whole floor seemed to heave to the side as the Reaper's mass effect field vanished and the planet's high-velocity winds slammed into the hull.

"What should we do with this geth, boss?" said Garrus as he finished donning his helmet.

"This one's different...it tried to communicate it with us. I want to take it back to the ship and interrogate it."

Tali couldn't believe she was hearing this from him, especially given how many geth he had fought during his life. "What? Shepard...leave it! You know what they're capable of! If it gets into the _Normandy's_ systems..."

"We don't have time to debate it! Let's go!"

Shepard and Garrus both slung their arms underneath the geth's shoulders and began dragging it along. "Hey guys, I just noticed something," said Kasumi just as they left the engine room. "It looks like that geth is passed out drunk and you and Garrus are his wingmen, dragging him out from the bar."

The Reaper continued to shake as it began its plummet into the depths of the brown dwarf, bringing it ever closer to being crushed into something no bigger than a baseball. Ahead they saw the opening EDI mentioned – a large gash in the hull where the _Normandy_ was moving into position. Tali could only guess at the level of piloting skill it took to keep the ship so steady right next to a ship that was now being buffeted and tossed about in the wind.

Garrus and Shepard continued to be utterly unperturbed by the fact that the Reaper was falling apart around them. "You know, this geth is surprisingly light. I always imagined they'd be heavier."

They were now at the edge of the hull breach, with a shard drop-off beneath them. Unfortunately, the _Normandy_ could not get quite close enough for them to just walk into the airlock, which meant they would have to leap across. And if they didn't make the jump, then they would plummet into the abyss below.

They sent the geth across first. Of course, since they couldn't just leap across while carrying it, the solution was to hurl it across head-first into the airlock, no doubt a great shock to those waiting on the ship who had no idea that Shepard was bringing a geth back. Garrus went next, leaping the gap with ease, making Tali feel as if he were mocking her, as always. He was followed by Miranda and Grunt, who looked surprisingly graceful in his leap for a krogan. Now it was her turn. She steadied her nerves by telling herself that quarians had stronger legs than humans and that she should be able to make the jump with no problem.

Tali took a deep breath, forcing herself not to look at the void below. She made one step back, then sprinted forward and leapt forward with all her strength. She kept her eyes closed all the while and did not reopen them until she felt her feet hit the hard metal floor of the _Normandy..._

...and found herself staring into the 'eye' of the inactive geth. It was like the thing was staring up at her with an expression that seemed to be saying "Hi there!"

The rest of the team leapt aboard the _Normandy,_ Shepard being the very last, performing an impressive jump that Tali swore was in slow-motion. As soon as he was on board the airlock doors slammed shut. Below the Reaper carcass continued its plummet into the atmosphere, and mere minutes later it was it was completely pulverised. But not before it sent out an automated message to its Reaper brethren, informing them of its destruction. And upon receiving this message, the Reapers decided once and for all that it was time to take to decisive action regarding "this Shepard problem."


	14. My Own Personal Killbot

_A relatively short installment before the final chapter. Note that I have a vague idea for the third Mass Effect story, however, I will not be able to even begin it until Mass Effect 3 is released._

Chapter 14 – My Own Personal Killbot

* * *

Past the Omega-4 relay, deep in the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, the Collector base was in a flurry of activity.

Up to this point, the Collectors had spared no effort to find and destroy Shepard. They had sent their largest cruiser to destroy the _Normandy,_ and succeeded, only to find that Shepard had been miraculously brought back to life. They tried to destroy him on Horizon, and failed. They even managed to lure him aboard their cruiser with a false distress signal, only for that to end in failure as well. So now the Collectors, under the guidance of their Reaper overlords, were determined to destroy Shepard for good. And while the amount of resources they were devoting to this task might have appeared absurdly excessive to an outside observer, to the Reapers it was nothing. They had waited 50,000 years for this moment, and they weren't going to sit by and let one human bugger things up.

To that end, the Collectors had constructed five new cruisers, all of the same design as the one that had destroyed the _Normandy_. Alongside the five cruisers were around five dozen smaller frigate-sized vessels, each armed with a scaled-down version of the antiproton beam used by the cruisers. After that were two hundred fighters, each one far stronger than any equivalent Alliance craft. But the true _pièce de résistance _of this fleet was what might be described as the Collector "über Dreadnought." At nearly three times the length of the Collector cruiser, it had been under construction for nearly a year – a great length of time even accounting for the fast pace with which the Collectors work. Its main weapon was a magnetohydrodynamic cannon whose projectiles struck their targets with the equivalent force of 500 gigatons of TNT. In addition to this devastating weapon, it also possessed six antiproton cannons, each one equivalent to the one found on a cruiser, and inside the ships there was enough space to hold several hundred additional fighters.

This particular ship had not been created specifically to destroy Shepard, as the knowledge that he was alive had only come to light within the past few months. It had been intended for use as a sort of "mass harvester" of human colonists, capable of incapacitating even the largest settlements and making off with their entire population. That purpose had changed, however, as Harbinger had declared that destroying Shepard was now the Reapers' and Collectors' highest priority. Their second-highest priority was in capturing or eliminating Tali'Zorah, who was far too unpredictable to left her to own devices.

* * *

"I must admit Shepard, I'm impressed," Miranda said as he walked into the meeting room. "Compared to our previous excursions to derelict vessels, this mission went smoothly, for the most part." That the entire Cerberus research time had been turned into husks did not appear to bother her overmuch, but then again she had not been too upset over the loss of the Lazarus Project researchers, either.

"More importantly," she continued, "we've recovered a geth with a fully-intact memory core. It would invaluable to Cerberus' cyber-weapons division; I assure you the cash bounty is substantial."

Jacob shook his head. "Going to have to disagree on that, ma'am. Just having the thing on board is a risk. I say space it."

Shepard intended neither of these things. "I've killed hundreds of these things, but I've never had one talk to me. I want to start up, interrogate it."

Miranda was understandably displeased with this, as she had planned on winning major brownie points with the Illusive Man for bringing the geth back to Cerberus. "It's a geth, commander. You know what they're capable of. If we start it up we might not be able to shut it down again."

"Then we shut it down the usual way: with bullets," Jacob said.

"That's not what I-"

"Enough! I've already made my decision. We'll take the necessary precautions; EDI is more than capable of resisting any geth hacking attempt."

That was his hope, at least.

* * *

Hvenna'Tor sat before his private terminal while the Observer spoke through an audio-only channel. Like most quarians, his private living quarters were cramped and cluttered. Given the space available on this station, he might have opted for far larger quarters, but as a quarian he had an instinctive, almost subconscious aversion to the wasting of space. All around him were datapads, computer terminals, OSDs, and other products of his research. They were so close to a breakthrough. Just the other day they had managed to maintain control over twenty geth platforms with no sign of neural degradation within the test subject. The "exploding head" problem had been solved, and all that remained was expanding the scope of the project to encompass more and more geth platforms, until they had enough of them on their side to fight against the rest of the geth, and with any luck the two sides would destroy each other, and they would be able to create more geth; these ones totally obedient without any thought of rebellion. Then the quarian people would return to their homeworld, and no one would care about some worthless human slaves that had been sacrificed for the project.

Poor Rael'Zorah, he had meant well, but his attempts to subvert the geth had led to nothing but his death. That was not to say that his work was inept, of course; as a matter of fact it was actually quite brilliant. Most hacking attempts against a geth platform only lasted a short while, as every other process within the geth's neural net detected the subversion of the other processes and automatically corrected them. The only way to permanently hack a geth would be to ensure that the platform was completely isolated from the rest of the network, which wasn't practical if you wanted to hack large numbers of platforms at once.

Rael's plan had been different. His virus would leave the geth platform's processes unaffected, infecting instead the programmable logic controllers that controlled a platforms motor control. It intercepted system calls between the programmable logic controller and the platform's processes, introducing a slow but steady degradation of the platform's motor control until it was unable to move or even remain standing. The virus also had the ability to fake sensor signals from the platform's motors and servos, tricking the platform's processes into thinking that there was nothing wrong. It was a bit like afflicting an organic lifeform with a form of progressive neuromuscular degeneration, one that an individual would not be aware of until he or she was unable to move.

Unfortunately, Rael's virus worked slowly. It had to, in order for the virus to propagate to a sufficient number of platforms before the geth, as a whole, realised what was happening. With Hvenna's plan, they would not have to worry about the geth learning what they were up to, as the geth would _willingly_ obey their directives. And once they were under the quarians' control, the possibilities were endless. They could simply order the geth to self-destruct; that would likely be what most people wanted, but they would be throwing away the largest synthetic army in the galaxy. This was one thing he and the Observer agreed upon. Imagine how swift the rebuilding of their great cities on the homeworld would be with the geth performing the bulk of the labour. Some quarians hoped to get their embassy on the Citadel back, but what was the point of appeasing the Council, the same Council that had turned their backs on them?

Such thoughts were best saved for another time, however. At the moment Hvenna was dealing with a very angry Observer, or at least he _thought_ she was angry, because she was speaking in a very calm tone of voice.

"I have it in good authority that you sent my men to kill Commander Shepard."

"I regret nothing but that they failed," he said flatly.

"No doubt you reasoned that your worth to this research project would prevent me from taking any retributive action against you. It was masterfully planned, but I saw through it."

"I see that you did."

"You should have known that it would fail, Hvenna. Nobody can touch Shepard. He is truly a magnificent specimen. It is only a matter of time before he is mine, body and soul."

He could not help but roll his eyes at this nonsense. "You are letting your lust for this human cloud your judgement, Overseer."

"Lust!" she cried. "You speak only of the physical...the base urges! No, what I feel for Shepard can be described as nothing short of the deepest, most passionate love that one sapient being can possibly feel for another. Is a love that transcends space and time, a love that both physical _and_ spiritual. If only you knew, if only you _could_ know, this sort of feeling, but alas you cannot, Hvenna'Tor, because in your blackened heart you are incapable of feeling love. You do not know the depths of desire that I feel!"

"Overseer-"

She ignored him. "I still remember the first time I laid eyes upon him, during the extranet news vids after the attack on the Citadel. Before then I never imagined I could ever love a man of another race, let alone a human. But when I saw his eyes there on the screen, I knew in the depths of my soul that we were destined to be together, though I was not consciously aware of that at the time. No, it was not until he first set foot on the _Rayya_ that I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our love was _meant to be!_ And soon, very soon now, we shall be together. Perhaps he will have some reservations about being with an alien, but I am certain that in the deepest depths of his soul he _knows_ we're meant to be together! Yes, this day is drawing close, I can feel it! When the geth are once more under control Shepard and I shall rule the galaxy as king and queen!"

_She has most certainly lost it,_ he thought as she continued to rant. "Yes, I can sense your scepticism, Hvenna. 'He's a human,' you'll say. 'It's dangerous for a quarian to be intimate with aliens!' But love will conquer all! I've spent the last three months intentionally infecting myself with every possible contagion, bacteria, virus, and allergen that one might find on the human body. Yes, I have suffered greatly for this, but no price is too dear when love is what you are bargaining for! Now I can be close to him, feel my skin against his, without this blasted suit to keep us apart. But you don't understand that sort of thing, do you? No, you've never known the love of a woman; I've read your file, you know. You were only dedicated to your work. You never knew love, passion, longing; you've never experienced _pure erotic desire!_ You've never experienced the sheer, unbridled bliss of losing yourself completely to another person. How could you _possibly_ understand what I feel? I know you're judging me, Hvenna, you always have. You think I'm insane, mad, unbalanced! But _keelah, _am I sane! I have never seen things so clearly in my life. My life as an admiral was but a hollow shell, a mere audition for what is to come. When Shepard and I rule the galaxy, the flotilla will not matter, for we will have thousands, tens of thousands, _hundreds of thousands_ of worlds under our control! And with an army of geth numbering in the millions, no one will _dare_ stand against! My crown will be of galaxies, and galaxies of galaxies! Interdimensional existences will be mine to create and destroy at a whim! _I will become the pan-dimensional liege lord!"_

He stared at the terminal, unblinking. "Are you finished?"

"Finished!" she thundered. "You'll be the one who's 'finished' if you don't show some bloody respect! You know nothing of love! What Shepard and I share in the most consummate form of love this galaxy will ever see! It will have the sensuality of the asari, the raw bestial drive of the krogan, the intellectual depths of the salarians, the discipline of the turians!"

Hvenna's patience for her nonsense was rapidly nearing its end. He wondered if the admiral were not supposed to be on some sort of medication, which she presently forgotten to take. "I hate to deflate your expectations, Overseer, but there are rumours that Commander Shepard might have been romantically involved with an information broker on Illium, one Liara T'Soni."

This did not deter her in the slightest! "Bah! Some asari wench? Whatever Shepard feels for her can be nothing but the most shallow of infatuations! Does he not know that when his body has been ravaged by time that she will not have changed at all, that she will likely go on to have several more partners before her death? How is that eternal love? That is cheap, that is debased, that is superficial and transient! But we quarians, we live as long as humans. Shepard and I are nearly of the same age, so there shall never the worry that one of us might outlive the other. And even if he is still attached to this blue-skinned strumpet, I know that when he lays eyes on me, when he sees my face behind this mask, he will give up his childish affections for that tentacle-headed slattern and leave her so fast he'll redshift on the way out the door! Don't you see? Our being together is inevitable, our rise to glory is inevitable, and if you don't change your insolent tone then you will not live to see it!" With that she cut the comm channel, mercifully sparing Hvenna'Tor any more of her ranting.

* * *

Looking down at the immobile body of the geth, Shepard had to fight the urge to shoot it.

He knew that Tali was probably feeling the exact same thing.

It looked like every other geth, save for a series of flaps around its "head," the purpose of which Shepard could only guess at. A large hole had been blasted in the right side of its chest, exposing a twisting mass of wiring and cables, some of which looked like it had been recently repaired. A piece of N7 armour had been bolted onto place around the shoulder and chest; Shepard couldn't say for certain if it was _his_ N7 armour or not, but given that this particular geth was familiar with him, it certainly was a possibility.

Tali was unable to hide her anxiety. "Shepard, I...I know you are in charge of this mission, and this is your decision, but...are you sure this is a good idea?"

"No."

"That's...not very reassuring, Shepard."

"Well if this geth goes crazy, we've killed hundreds of them before." He fired up his omni-tool. "EDI, are you ready?"

"I have erected exactly 5,562 additional firewalls and am prepared to resist any hacking attempts."

At the moment, the geth was behind a forcefield, although that likely wouldn't slow it down for very long should it decide to attack. Taking a deep breath, Shepard initiated the geth's power-on sequence, booting the platform operating which, according to his omni-tool, was called "Gethix .25." The light on its head flickered on, then it looked around for a bit, before the entire platform slowly rose to its feet, emitting a series of garbled noises all the while, which soon resolved themselves into actual speech.

"R..r...rriverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to..t...t..._online." _The geth then looked directly at him, and it was then that Shepard realised that the head flaps functioned in way similar to eyebrows, allowing the geth to make what was its equivalent of facial expressions. "Shepard-Commander."

Hearing a geth making actual speech was downright eerie, compared to that strange stuttering noise he had always associated with them. "Are you going to attack me?" he asked, discovering only after he had said the words how stupid that sounded.

"No." The geth then glanced over at Tali. "Addendum: Presence of Creator...name...Tali'Zorah...former associate of Creator Prazza. Outcome unpredictable."

Shepard sighed. "Why do I get the feeling I'm going to keep hearing about that guy for years after this?" He turned back to the geth. "You addressed me by name back on the derelict Reaper. Have we met."

"We have never met."

"But you know of me. I mean, I _have_ fought a lot of geth." In fact, had Shepard bothered to consult his hardsuit computer, he would have discovered that he had killed precisely 935 geth platforms since first setting foot on down Eden Prime those two years ago. This, unfortunately, paled into comparison to Kal'Reegar, who had amassed 9,526 geth kills on foot, with an additional 272,526 platforms destroyed when he infiltrated a geth cruiser as it was about to pass through a mass relay. He reprogrammed the ship to crash into the relay, then escaped into space through an airlock before impact. Clinging to the outside of the relay, he successfully managed to send _himself through the relay _to a system that the flotilla was passing through, and then radioed the fleet to come pick him up, thus becoming the first known individual to pass through a mass relay with nothing but an environmental suit.

"Shepard-Commander opposes the Heretics. Shepard-Commander opposes the Old Machines." Then it looked at Tali. "Creator Tali'Zorah opposes the Heretics. Creator Tali'Zorah opposes fashion sense."

Shepard stared into the geth's single head-light. "What."

"Warning: Corruption detected in memory blocks 0x43A01A7C5D91AB43 to 0x43A01A7C5D91FC42. Auto-correcting in 3...2...1..."

At this point he was beginning to suspect that this geth was a bit wonky from the blow it had received on the derelict Reaper; the synthetic equivalent of being punch drunk. "Old Machines? You mean the Reapers?"

"Reapers: a superstitious title originating with the Protheans. We refer to these beings as the Old Machine. The Heretics revere the Old Machines; the pinnacle of non-organic life. We reject their judgements; they are no longer part of us."

"And how many of these 'Heretics' are there?"

"Present estimates suggest ten to fifteen percent of all total geth."

"Then why haven't you destroyed them?"

"The Heretics desired to leave peacefully. We respected their decision. Our views were not mutually incompatible. Geth claim, 'Two people meet, and one doesn't show up.' Heretics claim, 'Two corpses fall off a building, and one dies on impact'."

Tali's initial hostility towards the geth had been replaced by utter confusion. "That...that doesn't make any sense!"

"The geth desire to build their own future; the Heretics desire the Old Machines to provide one for them. There are many paths to the same end; the consequentialistic philosophy of the Heretics was incompatible with that of the true geth."

_The "true" geth?"_ he thought. If what this particular geth was saying had any truth to it, then that meant that the geth who had attacked Eden Prime, who followed Saren as if he were a prophet, were only a fraction of the geth as a whole? "And what about the 'true' geth's future? Does it involve organics?"

"If they involve themselves, it will." Immediately after speaking these words, the geth began turnings its torso and arms from side, then up and down, almost as if it were attempting to dance and failing miserably. Not that Shepard would know anything about _that,_ of course.

"What...what are you doing?" he asked.

"Recalibrating servo motors...please wait..." It continued moving for a few seconds before resuming its upright posture.

"So what were you doing on board the Reaper?"

"Nazara, the entity organics refer to as 'Sovereign', provided the Heretics with a quantum storage device containing vital data. In order to parse this information we were required to analyse the technology of the Old Machines."

Tali spoke after remaining silent for most of the conversation. Shepard noticed that her hand was never far from her pistol, as if the geth were going to attack at any moment. "How did you even know about the Reaper?"

"We intercepted transmissions between Cerberus operatives. Cerberus uses weak encryption; determining the contents of their messages was trivial."

_Why am I not surprised?_ "Are the geth actively listening in on our transmissions?"

"Organics fear us. We wish to understand, not incite. Passive observation is the only feasible means of accomplishing this goal."

"What sort of 'observations' are you talking about?"

"Radio broadcasts, extranet postings, unsecured comm channels. Organics reveal much about themselves without their knowledge. Example: biometric scan of Creator Tali'Zorah reveals that she wishes to engage in hormonally-induced mating behaviour with Shepard-Commander. Addendum: reproduction between humans and quarians biologically impossible."

A very awkward silence fell over the room.

"Um...right," said Shepard. "So what is this data that's so vital to the geth?"

"Nazara provided the Heretics with a virus designed to be deployed within the geth network. Over time it will change us; make us believe in the Heretics' logic. It is the synthetic equivalent of what organics refer to as 'indoctrination'. We are presently engaged in efforts to counter this process."

"You keep referring to yourself as 'we,' but who are 'you,' exactly?"

"Geth."

"No, I mean, who are you specifically?"

"Geth."

He sighed. "What is the name of the platform standing directly in front of me?"

"Geth."

"All right, what do I call 'you' to distinguish the individual 'you' from every other geth platform out there?"

"There is no individual; this platform contains 1,183 individual processes, all operating as a gestalt consciousness."

Upon hearing this, EDI's avatar (which Joker snidely referred to as a "blue talking vagina") blinked into existence. "My name is Legion, for we are many."

"That sounds appropriate," Sheaprd quipped.

"Christian bible, the gospel of Mark, chapter five, verse nine," said the geth. "We acknowledge this an appropriate metaphor. 'The Pillow-Destroyer' would also be acceptable."

"'The Pillow-Destroyer?'"

"Christian bible, Ezekiel 18:20: 'Behold, I am against your pillows'."

"All right, maybe 'Legion' sounds better."

"We are Legion, a terminal of the geth We will integrate into _Normandy_."

Now he decided to ask the question regarding the bit of N7 armour it had acquired. "I see you've got a chunk of old armour attached to your frame. How did you come across it?"

"Following Nazara's destruction, we were dispatched to the locations you travelled to in pursuit of the Spectre Saren Arterius. Eden Prime, Therum, Feros, Noveria, Virmire, Ilos, and a dozen uncharted worlds. The trail ended at the _Normandy's_ wreckage on Alchera. This armour was recovered and used to repair damage suffered on Eden Prime."

"But why use my armour specifically? I mean, surely you could have used any other piece of scrap metal for that purpose."

The flaps around Legion's head began twitching about. "There was a hole," it said after a few seconds.

"That still doesn't tell me why you had to use _my_ old armour."

Legion said nothing, then began trembling and shaking as its servos started activating at random. A voice spoke, this one completely different from the one Legion had been speaking with until now. _"This platform has encountered a problem and has been shut down to prevent damage. Please attempt a restart at a later time. Error code 0xFD3094C2: Page Fault in Non-Paged Area." _ The geth then collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Shepard looked about sheepishly. "I, uh...think I broke it."

Tali was less than impressed with all this. "Great...we find the one geth in the galaxy that can speak, and it's crazy!"

It was all a lot to take in at once. The idea that the geth who had attacked Eden Prime and the Citadel were merely a splinter faction of the so-called "true geth" was awfully difficult to believe, especially when every single geth until now had tried to blow his head off.

"And what do you make of all this?" he said to Tali. "This bit about 'Heretics' and 'True Geth' and all that?"

"They're all the same people who drove us into exile, Shepard. Maybe Legion isn't trying to kill us now, but...but..." She gave an exasperated sigh and hung her head. "I've seen so many crazy things over the past two years, I don't even ask why these things happen any more. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we have a talking geth on board; but if it turns on us then I'll be the first to blast it out the nearest airlock!"

"Well we'll continue our 'interrogation' of the geth later. EDI, what's the ETA on your analysis of the Reaper IFF?"

"Analysis will still require several more hours of scanning. The device _is_ Reaper technology, commander, and it is significantly more complex than anything I have studied prior."

"Then I guess that can only mean one thing: it's time for a little "chat" with our mutual friend on the quarian Admiralty Board." He walked over to the nearest intercom and patched into the cockpit. "Joker, lay in a course for Eta Carinae; we've got a date with Admiral Xen." A second later, he opened the channel again. "Uh, just clarifying that, Joker, I did not mean that I _literally_ had a date with her; I was just speaking figuratively."

"Gotcha, commander."

* * *

By the time Shepard reached the _Normandy's_ cockpit, Joker the ship was already nearing the system's relay. "So, uh, this might not be a good time to ask you this, but have you played _Fleet and Flotilla 3?"_

He shook his head. "No, I haven't."

"Yeah, I guess you might not have much use for a cross-species dating simulator, what with you and Tali and all that."

"Does _everyone_ know about that?" he asked with a groan.

"Well there's probably one or two crewmembers on the lower decks that haven't found out yet. But, uh, about the game..."

"It any good?"

Joker scowled. "It's crap, commander! They totally ripped out _everything_ that made the original great! Less love interests, less dialogue options, more 'streamlining' that ripped the game's guts out. They even toned down the sex scenes, so now everyone's bumping uglies in their underwear! It's pathetic!"

"So I'm guessing I should give it a pass, then?"

"Don't even think about it, commander. They _totally_ dumbed it down for the omni-tool market. _Fleet and Flotilla _is now dead to me."

All he could give was a shrug. "Aren't you taking this a bit too seriously? I mean, it's just a dating sim. Surely there are other games you could play?"

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, like what, commander? The 521th sequel to _Call of Honor?_ The next piece of crap, overpriced DLC for _Galaxy of Fantasy?"_

Then EDI decided to join in the conversation. "May I remind you, Mr. Moreau, that the latest DLC for _Galaxy of Fantasy, 'Wrath of the Corpse Eater', _has sold more than 13 billion copies in the first week alone?"

"Uh-huh, and how many of those people are now kicking themselves for wasting their creds on that piece of crap? You know, when all this Collectors and Reapers crap is done with, I'm going to make my own game out of our experiences. It'll be _brilliant!"_

"Let me guess: I die in the first five minutes, and you play as the hero?"

"No, it'll be one of those old-school adventure games. You'll only die if you forgot to pick up some insignificant item on the Citadel before starting the final mission."

"Joker..."

"All right, all right! But you still won't get the best ending unless you find all three pairs of pantaloons and throw them into the _Normandy's _drive core, which turns them into a weapon capable of taking out a Reaper in a single shot."

"I don't think this game is going to sell very well, Joker."

"Oh just you wait, commander. I tell you, there's a _huge_ market for this sort of game just waiting to be tapped. And I'm sure as hell not going to 'streamline' it for those omni-tool retards, either!"

"Sales of omni-tool games comprise the majority of all game sales in the last standard galactic year, Mr. Moreau," said EDI.

"We'll still sell it to them, but they'll have to know that they'll be getting an inferior product. My new game is meant to be played on the computer."

After several more minutes of back-and-forth between Joker and EDI on how they were going to make this game based on Shepard's adventures, the _Normandy_ passed through the system's relay, bringing them one step closer to the goal, and one step closer to the madness of one lusty quarian admiral.


	15. Star Crossed Lovers

Chapter 15 – Star-Crossed Lovers

* * *

If there was a place in the galaxy that was equivalent to hell, it would be the star system of Eta Carinae.

One of the most luminous stars in the Milky Way, Eta Carinae was as large as the orbit of Earth around the sun, and brighter than four million of Earth's suns. It's emissions were so intense that the star's own gravity could barely hold it together, and it continually spewed hot gas from its poles, creating an immense nebula that surrounded the star and hid admiral Xen's research base from any observers. The star's intense radiation also provided a limitless source of energy, as even a modest array of solar panels could provide enough power to run several starships. This also meant that communication via conventional comm channels was impossible, as any transmission would be lost in the star's radiation. The only solution was to use a quantum entanglement communication relay, a device which was widely understood to perform several functions that were widely considered impossible, thus causing "potential damage to fabric of reality." Manufacturers of quantum entanglement relays dismissed these claims, stating they were little more than "socialist propaganda." What socialism had to due with particle physics was something they refused to elaborate on.

The current quantum entanglement comm relay installed on admiral Xen's base was none other than the Comm-Post® Quantobuddy Entango-Link, sold for the low, low price of 150 million credits. This particular system was highly praised by numerous publications, most notably _Citadel Electronics,_ widely considered the most authoritative publication among publications related to consumer electronics. They rated the Quantobuddy four out of five stars, praising its "crystal clear reception, even when being pulled in the all-devouring maw of a black hole." However, they deducted one star for the system's "occasional opening of a portal into a screaming nightmare realm from which there is no escape."

Eta Carinae's mass relay was located over a thousand AUs from the star itself, necessary to prevent ships from being incinerated by the star's intense heat. Why the Reapers had constructed a mass relay leading to such an obviously inhospitable star system was anyone's guess, though it was entirely possible that they had done so only as a joke. When the _Normandy_ exited the relay, the star itself appeared as mere pinprick in size, but it was so overwhelmingly bright that any windows on the ship had to automatically darken in order to dim the light.

Of course, a far more processing concern was the half-dozen ships stationed near the relay, all of which had locked their weapons on the _Normandy._

The ships were former mining vessels that had once belonged to Arcturus Geoscience Inc., and had since been purchased by admiral Xen at a hugely discounted rate. Their weapon systems had been upgraded, to the point where even the _Normandy,_ as heavily-armed as it was, was no match for them. Shepard's immediate reaction was that he had done a very foolish thing in coming here, forgetting that the admiral was expecting him. Needless to say, this was not one of his prouder moments.

Mere moments later, Daro'Xen's voice came over the comm channel. "Commander Shepard...I am so pleased that you were able join me. Be aware that any attempt to flee will result in the immediate destruction of your vessel. I also advise against the use of your ship's stealth system; I imagine that your heatsinks will overheat quite rapidly due to the star's intense heat and radiation emissions."

"So you're the one who's been experimenting on humans," Shepard retorted. "You know how many people like you that I've buried? More than I can count, and I can count pretty high, you know!"

"Oh _commander,_ you do misunderstand me! I am not here to do battle, but merely to talk. I ask that you come aboard my ship – _alone –_ and we'll have a most pleasant conversation. Then, on to dinner; I've already spent the last few hours preparing a sumptuous feast of human delicacies. Following that, well, let me just say that I don't think it's the sort of thing decent folk will talk about over a comm channel. Needless to say, the _pleasure_ shall be in the discovery. Mmm...yes!"

Joker glanced up at him. "You really know how to pick up crazy chicks, commander."

EDI's scans confirmed that admiral Xen's threats were anything but empty. "Scans indicate the six warships are equipped with numerous mass accelerator and directed energy weapons. It is unlikely we would survive a direct confrontation."

"Damn it, EDI! Never told me the odds!" Joker growled, slamming his fist on the armrest of his chair.

"And I must warn you, commander," Xen continued, "that I do not want to see any sign or trace of Rael'Zorah's daughter, whom you no doubt have hidden away somewhere on that ship of yours. Given here her highly disreputable service record and her tendency to become involved in reality-shattering events, I cannot afford to have her anywhere near us when we are in the middle of our..._negotiations." _The way she spoke that last word made Shepard shudder. "Now, I humbly request that follow our ship and dock with our lead research vessel. Allow me to state once more that any attempt to flee shall result in the immediate destruction of your vessel, and I would hate to lose such an impressive..._specimen..._such as yourself."

Joker spun his finger around his ear, indicating what he thought of admiral's Xen's mental state.

At that instant Shepard had an idea. "Listen, admiral, I know you research AIs, and I know you are experimenting on geth. So what if I told you that I had a geth on board that had 1,183 platforms running inside its head, and was capable of speech?"

The admiral did not answer for several seconds. "Are you attempting to deceive me, commander? That does not help our 'relationship'."

"No deception, admiral."

"Hmm, then I should very much like to see this 'talking geth' of yours. Be warned that if you attempt to arm the geth in any way I shall be forced to destroy you, naturally. You understand that I am almost certain that the thought of doing so is running through your head this very instant. No doubt you are thinking up some plan of escape, but not to worry. In but a short while you will not _want _to escape; it will be the very last thing on your mind...oh yes..."

With that Xen closed the comm channel. "It seems we don't have any choice," Shepard said, clenching his fists. "Follow them in, Joker, and maybe see about getting me some pepper spray. Although I guess admiral Xen's helmet would render that rather useless."

"So what are you planning, then? I'm...uh...guessing you have no intention of letting admiral Xen get her hands on you, am I right? I mean, Tali would probably get mad and all that...unless you wanted both of them to get their hands on you. At the same time."

"Joker..."

"All right, all right, just because we're in a sticky situation doesn't mean we can't inject a little humour into things!"

He ignored his remarks. "With any luck I'll be able to improvise. Legion's a geth; he can hack through pretty much anything. Maybe he can hack their security system or their defences."

The _Normandy_ followed the half-dozen ships the main research vessel, one of three small ships orbiting Eta Carinae at an extreme distance, and even this was about as close as one could get to the star with suffering damage from the star's staggering energy output. The star provided all the energy that the ships needed through an array of solar panels; their main reactors were not even in use, freeing them from the requirement of having to be regularly refuelled. There was even a ship mostly given over to hydroponics, so that the research base did not have to ship food in from the rest of the flotilla, ensuring that it remained a secret.

"EDI," said Shepard, "send Legion up here, and make sure he...it...is unarmed."

As Joker manoeuvred the ship into docking position, a number of lights appeared on the cockpit's holographic display, and a shrill alarm sounded. "They've got us lit up like a Christmas tree!" Joker exclaimed. "Every one of those ships has locked on to us."

"I guess this is admiral Xen's way of asking me out on a date. Just like that one date I went on way back when, where the girl's father decided to come along as a 'chaperone.' Too bad her father turned out to be a Blue Suns merc!"

"Like I said, commander, you know how to attract the crazy types."

Legion made his way up to the cockpit, making every crewman he passed by shudder quietly. By now everyone knew that they had a geth aboard, and while this particular geth had so far not gone on a killing spree, that did nothing to put anyone's mind at ease.

"Shepard-Commander."

"Legion, we're in a rather...difficult...situation. The quarian admiral Daro'Xen wishes to meet me for some rather...unsavoury...activities. 'Hormonally-induced courtship behaviour,' as you might put it. Trouble is, I'd rather suffer a particularly nasty episode of explosive decompression than have anything to do with her."

Legion's head-light blinked, indicating thought, perhaps? Or confusion. "Creator Daro'Xen will fail. Her operating system is incompatible with yours."

"I don't think that's going to deter her. But that's where you come in. She researches AI, see, and she's agreed to let you accompany me under the pretence that she'll be allowed to 'study' you. Maybe you can hack their security systems or their ship's computer. Anything to keep that woman's hands off me. If you succeed in hacking their systems, signal me by nodding your head, or in some other way that she won't recognise."

The _Normandy_ shuddered as it docked with the lead research vessel. The quarians had not even bothered to update the ship's name in the registry; it was still called the _Tampere, _the same name as when the ship had belonged to Arcturus Geoscience Inc. "EDI, see if you can hack through their firewalls, preferably in a way that's discreet. Admiral Xen is clearly mentally unstable; there's no telling what she'll do if we piss her off."

"Angry sex," Joker quipped. "Hot, angry sex."

Shepard and Legion stood in the airlock while the pressure between the two ships was equalised. _How do I get myself into these sorts of situations, anyway?_ he thought to himself. All he could think about was how much better his time would be spent preparing for the Omega-4 mission instead of dealing with some lust-crazed quarian admiral.

The airlock doors opened, revealing a sterile, grey hallway, the walls still bearing the logo of Arcturus Geoscience Inc. No sooner had he stepped aboard than the _Tampere's_ airlock doors slammed shut behind him. "Welcome aboard, commander," came the admiral's voice from down the hall. When Daro'Xen rounded the corner, Shepard was shocked to see a pair of geth flanking her, each one armed with what he immediately identified as the Hahne-Kedar CFX-104 "Megahurt" combat shotgun, recently recalled due to a calibration error in the mass accelerator firmware that resulted in the shotgun having a 0.00045% chance of launching the projectile directly at the operator's groin.

"Don't be alarmed by the geth, commander, they are fully under my control. Such is the fruit of my labour; complete control over the geth using the power of an organic consciousness linked directly to the geth's neural net. At the moment we only have a few dozen platforms under our control, but that number will increase exponentially in the near future, I am sure."

He crossed his arms. "I've seen your experiments. I should have you know that Cerberus would no doubt approve highly of what you're doing. Not exactly the sort of praise a quarian admiral would want to hear, is it?"

She ignored him and focused on Legion. "And this is the geth you mentioned." Daro'Xen began looking it over, not appearing too impressed with it. "'Tis not all that different from any other geth platform I've seen, except for this gaping hole, here. Is this the result of damage in combat, or has Tali'Zorah been 'experimenting' on it?"

Legion answered for him. "This platform is not available for experimentation."

The admiral stepped back. "It speaks! Yes...the increased number of runtimes would no doubt increase its processing capacity to the point where basic sentience is achieved. Oh, how I would love to open it up and see how the geth have evolved."

"Creator Daro'Xen's operating system is unstable. It desires to engage in mating behaviour with an incompatible species."

"'Tis not a very _tactful _geth, is it? But it does speak the truth, commander. Perhaps we could discuss this unique geth platform another time and instead talk about our impending...union?"

Shepard began cracking his knuckles. "I'd rather talk about your impending beating."

This remark appeared to shock her. "Oh, commander, I understand that you may be feeling rather put-upon giving the circumstances of our meeting, but surely you would never hit a lady, would you?"

"There's a certain reporter from Westerlund News who'd dispute that claim."

"Now don't be stubborn, commander! We both know that we belong together, I just happen to have come to terms with that fact, while you are still in denial. You won't have any choice in the matter, because soon..._very_ soon...you will not be able to keep your hands off me. Then you will wonder why you even resisted in the first place."

As usual, he was not buying it. "Look, I don't know what sort of drugs you're on, or what medication you're _not_ on, but keep your hands to yourself and I won't be forced to thrash you. That helmet of yours might keep me from hitting you in the face, but I doubt the rest of your suit is that tough. You know, when Cerberus rebuilt me, they gave me the ability to punch you so hard I could probably shatter a good number of bones with a single blow."

"But why? Aren't you tired of all the violence in this galaxy? I think love is what we need more of, don't you agree?"

"Violence?" he thundered. "You're the one who's been experimenting on human prisoners! You're the one who came up with the harebrained idea of _sticking Prazza's brain inside a goddamn geth prime! _And whatever you've planned to do with the geth under your control will involve horrendous amounts of bloodshed, no doubt."

Upon hearing this, admiral Xen turned wrathful. "Don't you dare lecture me, Shepard! I don't bring you here to have you spew rubbish about things you know nothing about! Your species has a homeworld, a seat on the Council, and the respect of the galactic community, while what do we have? A homeworld we are exiled from, that's being pawed over by soulless machines? A crumbling fleet of ships, most of which rightly belong in a museum? Men, women, and children who go for months without seeing the faces of their friends and family?" She then began pacing about. "Don't you see? What I'm doing is what's important! _This_ has value, _this_ has lasting meaning! If what I do helps put the quarian race back on the homeworld, then no one will care about a few worthless prisoners I sacrificed! My work will let us take back our glory!"

While Daro'Xen was ranting, Legion was infiltrating the geth platforms that the admiral had under her control, engaging in the AI equivalent of attempting to convert the "apostate" geth away from their worship of the organic mind admiral Xen had connected them to. "And now look at what you've done!" Daro'Xen growled. "You've gotten me all angry, exactly the opposite mood I wanted to be in. I shall speak plainly: I want you in my quarters, and I want you to make love to me. _For hours."_

"No."

"Excuse me, what?"

"No."

She laughed. "I see, you are playing...what is the human expression? 'Hard to get?' Is that it?" At that point Legion nodded his head, indicating to Shepard that he had successfully regained control of the geth platforms.

"No," he said, slapping his forehead with his open palm. "In your case, I'm 'impossible to get.' Now, the first thing I'm going to do is shut down this little research operation of yours. Then I'm going to make sure the entire Migrant Fleet knows exactly what you've been up to, and I'll doubt they'll be pleased. Then I'll give a right sound thrashing, because you've been seriously pissing me off!"

"Oh? And how do you propose to do that? In case you haven't noticed, commander, you are at a distinct disadvantage here."

"Well, you know those geth standing next to you?"

"What about them?"

"They've just been hacked."

The two geth flanking Daro'Xen turned around and pointed their weapons at her. A few seconds later, a panicked voice spoke over the ship's intercom. "Admiral! The geth are no longer responding the control signals! They're breaking lose! _Aaaaaagghhh..."_

Shepard grinned. "You see admiral, the great thing about having over a thousand runtimes running inside this geth is that he can use them to overwhelm any firewall. Hell, he could probably hack your suit computer and cut off your oxygen supply. And that's not the only trick I've got up my sleeve. Our ship has an AI, and she can hack her way into this ship's systems. She could activate its self-destruct mechanism, or delete the memory banks, destroying your precious research. I might even have her send this ship plummeting into the star, just because you've really pissed me off! So now it's just the two of us, and how well do you think you'd fare in a straight-up fight? I wonder if quarian admirals receive something comparable to the hand-to-hand training we N7 operatives receive?"

She did not move or speak for a few seconds. "You mean to say that...that you feel nothing for me?" Her tone was one of genuine distress and heartache.

He rolled his eyes. "Of course I don't! I don't even _know_ you! You're just yet one more example of the sort of crazed individual that I keep running into over and over again, the sort of person I always end up having to kill."

"B...but how? How is this possible? I studied your psych reports, your service record, your biography, and it all said you would be extremely susceptible to quarian feminine charms! Could I have been wrong...? No, I couldn't have been! You should be hopelessly in love with me by now!" The realisation then dawned on her, and she clenched her fists in anger. "...unless another quarian woman _got to you first! _It's Rael's daughter, isn't it? I should have known that it was more than professional concern when you spoke on her behalf at her trial. Tell me, commander, what can she possibly offer you? She never displayed any interest in following her father's footsteps, content merely to indulge herself in matters of no real importance in the grand scheme of things, whereas I am an admiral, one of the most powerful individuals on the flotilla, and once the geth are under my control I shall be the most powerful individual in the entire _galaxy!"_

"Tali'Zorah has one advantage you lack, admiral. _She's not batshit crazy."_

"Bah! I am a woman, while she is but a girl! No doubt her childish infatuation with you will come to an end sooner or later. Not only that, I can show you pleasures that she will _never_ be able to offer you!"

"All right, just shut up. I'm not interested in continuing this conversation. I'm going to purge this ship's memory banks, wipe every trace of your abominable 'research' from them, and then I'm going to go back to the _Normandy_ and sending a message to the Migrant Fleet, telling them all about what you've done. I'll even tell them about your sick little infatuation with me; wonder how well _that_ will go over?"  
"Fine" she screamed, stamping her foot like a petulant child. "Then get off my ship, and take your little prize robot with you! Go crawling back to that filthy little hussy of yours!" She brought up her omni-tool and began furiously entering commands. "What's that human expression, Shepard? 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?' Well you're about to find out what that means! This ship has the last Perkele5000 mineral scanner left in the galaxy, and I've just fired it at the star! In a few minutes this sytem will be consumed in the largest explosion this galaxy has ever seen, if the data from Tali'Zorah's mission reports is accurate! I hope this was all worth it, you backstabbing son of a bitch!"

Admiral Xen turned and ran back into the ship, while Shepard returned to the airlock. Legion, having remained silent during most of the exchange between Shepard and admiral Xen, finally spoke up. "Organic mating runtimes contain significant numbers of programming errors. Recommending updating firmware."

"You don't say."

EDI had already managed to hack the _Tampere_'s airlock controls, so Shepard and Legion hastily made their way back to the _Normandy. _"Joker! Disengage the docking clamps and get us the hell out of here! In a few minutes the star's going to-"

He was interrupted by Tali, panting for breath after having run up from engineering. "Shepard, I've got terrible news! The _Normandy's_ scanners detected the emissions from a Perkele5000 mineral scanner! That's the same kind that Prazza accidentally caused a star to go supernova with!"

"I know. Admiral Xen did it in a fit of pique after I spurned her advances."

Tali stared at him, wondering if he were joking for all of half a second before realising that, yes, admiral Xen was that crazy. Nor was she at all surprised that this particular brand of insanity was happening around her, as she had long since come to terms with her status as some cosmic plaything.

As if to make the whole thing worse, EDI had to chime in as well. "Correction: the mass of Eta Carinae is sufficient for the explosion to be classified as a hypernova."

"Hypernova?" said Shepard.

"Like a supernova, but bigger."

"Oh, that's not good."

EDI wasn't finished. "It is probable that the explosion will result in the emission of 100 tredecillion joules of gamma ray radiation from the star's axis of rotation."

"And that's a lot, I take it?"

"That is ten with 44 zeroes after it."

"Then Joker, get this ship moving!"

But no sooner had he given these orders than one of the quarian ships let loose with a barrage of mass accelerator fire, specifically targeting the _Normandy_'s engineering section. The barrage quickly overwhelmed their kinetic barriers, penetrating the hull and severing a major power conduit of the _Normandy _FTL drive. The blast rocked the ship, nearly throwing Shepard to the floor, and while a few lights flickered on and off there were no signs of any exploding consoles (the leading cause of death among Alliance crewmen), as Cerberus, in a rare display of competence, had elected to install circuit breakers on the _Normandy._

EDI rattled off the systems that were now broken: "FTL drive offline. Power conduit rupture in sector 5B. Radiation alarm in engineering, evacuation order sounded."

Joker, who had faced certain death too many times before to be perturbed, simply shrugged and said, "Well, we're boned."

Outside, the quarian ships hurriedly flew off towards the mass relay. The energy pulse from the Perkele5000 mineral scanner reached Eta Carinae a few seconds later, and it was not long before the star's surface began to roil more furiously than it had prior. The ferocity of the nuclear reactions within its core meant that the star's own gravity was barely enough to hold it together, and thanks to the Perkele5000's energy pulse it would only be a short while before the star went nova.

"EDI, what about the ship's sublight drive? Is it still operative?"

"Affirmative, but a typical supernova results in the expulsion of stellar matter at a speed exceeding 30,000 kilometres per second. The _Normandy's _sublight propulsion system will not allow us to outrun the explosion."

"Can the FTL drive be repaired?"

"FTL drive power can be rerouted through a redundant power conduit, however, radiation levels inside the engineering compartment are rising rapidly. It is unlikely that any unshielded organics could survive for more than a few minutes."

"Don't we have any radiation suits?" Shepard asked.

"Radiation suits were not considered 'essential' by Cerberus command," EDI replied flatly.

He pounded his fist against a nearby bulkhead. "Goddamn it, Cerberus! Was bringing me back to life the only thing they did _right?"_

"I can do it, Shepard," said Tali. "My suit will protect me from the radiation long enough to reroute the power."

He glared at her. "'Long enough?' You mean you could die doing this?"

She didn't answer for a second. "Y...yes, but if someone doesn't get the FTL drive operational, we'll all die!"

Now Shepard was in the one situation every captain dreaded: the prospect of having to order his crew to their deaths. Hadn't Ashley reminded him of why the Alliance forbade fraternisation? Hadn't his instructor at the academy told him the exact same thing? "Listen," he'd said, "when the people around you are all fighting and dying pointlessly, who do you want your back? A comrade-in-arms, or some girl you dumped just two days before?" At that point someone had asked the instructor if fraternisation was acceptable with non-humans that they encountered during their tour of duty, and the instructor nearly lost it. "Gettin' busy with aliens is sick and wrong! Sick and wrong, I say! I swear, if I find any of you maggots with pictures of them blue-skinned tentacle-heads in your bunks then I will write my name in bruises on your ass!"

Then he had a realisation. "Legion could do it!" he said. "He's a geth; the radiation won't affect him!"

Tali, unsurprisingly, was not convinced. "I...I don't know Shepard; I don't think I can trust that thing with repairing the engines."

"I don't care," he growled, "I am _not_ losing a crew member on account of some quarian admiral's insane lust! If I do, then she wins!"

Even Tali couldn't really argue against that.

"We will endeavour to work with the greatest efficiency, Shepard-Commander. The malfunctioning quarian admiral must not be allowed to succeed."

Legion moved with startling speed to the elevator, while Tali just shook her head. That her life and the life of everyone else on board the _Normandy _was now in the hands of geth was utterly intolerable. But at the same time, she knew that the true villain was admiral Xen, for putting them in this situation in the first place. Worse, the admiral was now in possession of both a device capable of causing stars to explode and a serious chip on her shoulder regarding Shepard.

Then, Eta Carinae exploded.

The light from the explosion would take several minutes to reach the _Normandy, _but were they able to see it, they would bear witness to one of the most energetic events in the Milky Way Galaxy's 12.6 billion year history. The star, exploding with the force of 100 supernovae, immediately became the brightest object in the galaxy. Two beams of gamma ray radiation shot out from the star's poles, powerful enough to annihilate all life on any planet that lay in their path. Several thousand years from now, the first beam of radiation would cause the destruction of a civilisation that would have one day created a pornographic magazine similar to _Fornax,_ only this magazine would eventually publish a scene that would make the infamous "Forbidden Issue" of _Fornax _look like family-friendly fare, so their complete annihilation would result in the saving of billions of lives through the galaxy. The second beam of radiation would cause a series of mutations on a planet which would, tens of thousands of years hence, result in the evolution of a race of locust-like aliens that would seek to devour all life in the galaxy.

Down in engineering, Legion made his way to the damaged power conduit. The mass accelerator slug had ripped through the hull and severed the power conduit cleanly in two. As a result the entire engineering compartment was flooded with radiation, none of which affected Legion in the slightest. Those that had been in this part of the ship were presently in the med bay, seeking treatment for radiation exposure. Everyone, that is, except Jack, who had simply told the radiation to "fuck off," a request with which it had immediately complied.

The first task was to temporarily deactivate the drive core, reroute power, then reactivate the core, all the while a gigantic mass of stellar material was hurtling towards the ship at relativistic velocities. In less than a second Legion had downloaded a complete schematic of the _Normandy _(something that Tali would have a heart attack about, if she knew) and was already working far faster than any organic might have. EDI kept those up in the cockpit informed of Legion's progress, and Shepard could have sworn that EDI's tone of voice was that of someone trying very, very hard to make it seem as if she were not all impressed with the geth's skills.

Outside, they caught their first glimpse of the hypernova as the light from the event finally reached the _Normandy._ The star appeared to double, triple, then quadruple in size; a massive, ever-expanding ball of hot gas racing towards them at tens of thousands of kilometres per second. It steadily grew larger and larger, until it nearly filled the cockpit window.

"So, uh, commander," Joker said, "that admiral Xen was crazily in love with you, am I right?"

"Yes."

He sighed. "You know, the next time someone tells me that 'love is all you need,' I'm going to punch them in the nuts."

Down in engineering Legion continued to work at a superhuman pace, using his omni-tool to repair severed cabling and interconnects, and within a minute he was already working on reconnecting the backup power conduit to the FTL drive. But even this frantic pace of work seemed too slow for those up in the cockpit, who could only stare out the window at the swelling mass of stellar matter presently roaring towards them. If Shepard and the crew of the _Normandy _really were the galaxy's best hope against the Reapers, then it was entirely possible that admiral Xen would be responsible for the destruction of all sapient life in the Milky Way, for no other reason than she was a jilted, obsessed lover. Which, in Shepard's mind, was a damn poor reason for annihilating all intelligent life.

Legion was successful in re-routing power to the FTL drive, but the drive required at least a minute to be powered-up from a total powered-down state. Staring out the hot, fiery death racing towards them, Tali quietly grasped Shepard's hand and then, perhaps channelling Urdnot Wrex, said, "If I die here, I'm going to _kill_ admiral Xen." Shepard's only thought was that, if he died this time, there was not a snowball's chance of hell of Cerberus bringing him back to life this time, at least not without the use of black magic and voodoo.

Suddenly, a green light flickered on the cockpit panel, indicating the FTL was now operational. Joker turned the ship around, just as the hypernova explosion, now appearing as an infinitely enormous wall of superheated stellar matter, was only seconds away from vaporising them.

"EDI, get us the hell out of here!"

The _Normandy_ lurched as it jumped to FTL, as the restarting of the FTL drive had resulted in the drive core becoming ever so slightly out of calibration. Still, that was vastly preferable to being incinerated, and everyone on board breathed a sigh of relief.

At the exact same moment, the Collector fleet that had been under construction for the past two years entered the Eta Carinae system, determined to destroy the _Normandy_ with overwhelming force and ensure that Shepard was finally killed for good. Instead, all they found was a enormous hypernova explosion racing towards them with no chance for them to escape.

_"OH COME ON," _Harbinger thundered, speaking through one of his drones on the bridge of the Collector "über Dreadnought." "_WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF __**THIS?**__ THIS IS JUST UNFAIR. I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, SHEPARD. NEXT TIME!" _A second later the entire Collector fleet was vaporised in the explosion, destroying everyone of their ships save for the single cruiser they had left back at their base beyond the Omega-4 relay. And no one on the _Normandy_ knew that they had all escaped certain death _twice_ that day.

* * *

Of the quarian ships that had escaped the hypernova, Hvenna'Tor and his assistant Taedal had commandeered one of the smaller research vessels and was now making their way away from the Eta Carinae system as fast as their ship could possibly go. Both of them had no aim or desire beyond exacting vengeance on admiral Xen for destroying their research for no other reason than a fit of jealously. Neither of them could have guessed that the admiral's insane obsession with Shepard would have caused things to go so spectacularly and horribly wrong in every way things could _possibly_ go wrong. For that reason they had copied all of their research data to the ship's computer, and with it they planned to restart their work anew.

"Un-bloody-believable," said Hvenna. "Our life's work rent to shivers because of _love._ And that damned woman got away with it! And she'll likely return to the flotilla with no one the wiser."

"We could always tell the admiralty board what she was up to," said Taedal flatly.

He scoffed at this. "And you think they will believe an exile? The admiralty board are fools who are too busy bickering amongst themselves to realise that one of their own is a madwoman. I would not be surprised if she is already back on the _Moreh_, carrying on as if nothing's happened. Bah!"

"Do you think Shepard managed to get away before the hypernova destroyed his ship?"

"I don't know, and I don't care. If he is alive, then he'll be far too busy with his mission to bother with us."

They said nothing to one another for several minutes. With the Eta Carinae mass relay inaccessible (and very likely destroyed in the hypernova explosion), they would have to use their ship's FTL drive to reach another system and use the relay there, something that would take several days, if not weeks. That would allow them time to decide how they would resume their research. They would need somewhere isolated – which would not prove difficult given the vastness of space – and they would need more geth platforms and human test subjects. Obtaining humans from batarian slavers presented little difficulty, but obtaining functional geth platforms was something else entirely.

"Hvenna," said Taedel after a few minutes of silence, "what does this large red button here on the control console do? The one labelled 'Awesome?'"

"I don't know; there was nothing mentioned of it in the Arcturus Geoscience ship operations manual. I can only assume that the shipbuilders installed it as some sort of joke."

His curiosity piqued, Taedel reached over and pushed the button. "Thank you for pushing the Awesome Button," the VI cheerfully informed them. "This ship will now self-destruct in three...two..."

Hvenna and Taedal glared at each other in mutual horror.

"...one..."

"Motherfu-"

* * *

Back on the _Normandy_, Shepard, Tali, Garrus were sitting in the mess hall, taking a short but well-deserved break. They had escaped death at the hands of admiral Xen, and now they were heading right straight back towards death through the Omega-4 relay. Still, there was no reason why they couldn't have this one brief moment to relax and unwind. After facing down a lust-crazed quarian admiral, facing the enslaved insectoid servants of the Reapers sounded downright mundane.

"I can't believe a geth saved us," said Tali. "I...I never thought-"

"...and admiral Xen was stopped by one of the very same creatures she sought to enslave," Garrus added. "I always love it when the bad guys get taken down with irony."

"But it's not over yet," said Shepard. "Admiral Xen is still out there, and doubt she'll be stopping her research any time soon. And worse, she's got a mineral scanner in her hands that can _make stars explode._"

"So what are we going to do?" Tali asked.

"Our mission takes priority. When the Collectors are destroyed, and we're still alive, we'll track her down."

"I sent a message to Shala'Raan and Han'Gerrel, informing them of Daro'Xen's crimes. But it will be a claim made without evidence. I've also spoken with Kal'Reegar, and he says he's going to be dealing with admiral Xen 'personally'."

Garrus laughed. "We know she's rotten; who needs evidence? That's never stopped me before. And if I understand quarian law correctly, the worst thing that could happen to her is that she'll be exiled. That'll give her all the opportunity she needs to carry on with her sick 'research'."

Aethyta approached them with a round of drinks. "So Shepard," she said with a mocking grin, "word is that some sex-crazed quarian admiral tried to put the moves on you, and blew up a star when you told her to get the hell out. That about right?"

"Yes, pretty much."

"Ha! Never a dull moment with you, huh? I'll say this much – this is a lot more exciting than tending bar on Illium. Of course, I think you should have taken the admiral up on her offer; she sounds like she would have been a real demon between the sheets!"

"Thank you, but I prefer my women to be non-crazy."

She shrugged. "Sometimes, crazy is the best way to go."

* * *

"Crazy" was also the word anyone on board the _Tampere_ would have used to describe admiral Xen at that point in time. She had ordered the ship's captain to hang back and wait for the hypernova explosion to destroy the _Normandy,_ only to watch in horror as the _Normandy_ escaped just seconds before being obliterated. When that happened, admiral Xen nearly had an apoplexy from sheer rage. She paced about in front of the ship's crew, who were sworn to secrecy in regards to the admiral's research project, but many of whom were contemplating insubordination when the admiral's clear insanity was made blindingly obvious.

"Shepard won't get away with this! He is nothing next to me, _absolutely nothing! _I cannot believe that anyone would have the gall, the sheer _nerve_ to repudiate my advances! It's unthinkable! I'll destroy him! I'll destroy him and I'll destroy that brazen hussy, that disgrace of a quarian that's gotten her claws into him! I will!"

"Admiral," said one of the researchers, "please calm down."

"_Calm down?"_ she howled. "Calm down? The love of my life, my _soul mate,_ has just turned me away, and you expect me to _calm down? _Obviously you have never known true love, true passion, true desire! I ought to flush you out the nearest airlock right this second for suggesting something so patently ridiculous!"

Another researcher was brave enough to speak out against her. "Admiral, many of us are requesting that we be allowed to leave the project and return to our home ships. We no longer feel that this project is in the best interests of the quarian people."

"_Leave?"_ she growled. "That is out of the question. You will be permitted to leave the project when I authorise it! _When I authorise it!_" She punctuated her statement by slamming her fist into a nearby control panel, narrowly avoiding hitting the _Tampere's _Awesome Button and destroying the ship. "No, this project shall start anew, even grander in scope than before. I still have all the project data stored on OSD backups; Shepard couldn't touch those! We'll start again, right where we left off. We _will_ bring the geth to heel, and we _will_ take back the homeworld. And when I finally track down Shepard, he'll wish he'd have died in that supernova!"

One of the _Tampere's_ crewman rushed into the room, panting for breath. "Admiral! We've just received a message from one 'Kal'Reegar!'"

"One of the Migrant Fleet's grunts?" said Daro'Xen with derision. "Well, don't just stand there! What did he say? I don't care if he has received every single commendation the flotilla can offer; he will not stand against me!"

"Well, uh...that message consists only of four words..."

"And what were they? Come on, out with it!"

The crewman fidgeted. "'_Do you want fury?'"_

And when she heard those four words admiral Xen, in the deepest, darkest corner of her mind, was afraid...


End file.
